The Preacher S Task And The Stone Of Stumbling The Lyman Beecher Lectures For 1957

THE PREACHER'S TAS

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Proclaiming the W^

D.T.NILES

TH E LYMAN BEECH ER LECTURES/ YALE UN IVERSIT

$2.50

THE PREACHER'S TASK

AND THE

STONE OF STUMBLING

by D. T. NILES

More than a century after American
missionaries first went out to tlie
Orient, the great-grandson o one of
their earliest converts came back to
this country to speak under the aus-
pices of America's most distinguished
lectureship on preaching. Drawing on
his experience as a Christian in Asia
in many "ways parallel to that of
the first-century Christians Dr. Niles
surveys THE PREACHER'S TASK from a
fresh, stimulating and strongly evan-
gelistic viewpoint.

The pattern of his book grows from
letters written by a Hindu, a Buddhist
and a Muslim friend in which each
gives the central reason why he finds
it impossible to become a Christian.
In the light of their objections,
Dr. Niles radically re-examines the
preacher's responsibility in presenting
the message of Christ. His call for a
presentation of the whole of the Gos-

(Continued on back flap)

1148 00294 7166

251 64-04102

Miles

The preacher f s task and the

stone of stumbling

The Preacher's Task

and the
Stone of Stembling

Tlie 3?reaclier's Task:

atid the
Stone of Stumbling

THE LYMAN BEECHER LECTURES
FOR 1957

D. T. Niles

HARPER & ROW, PUBLISHERS

YORK, EVAI^STOII, ANT)

THE PREACHER'S TASK AND THE STONE OF STUMBLING

Copyright <g) 1958 by Daniel Thambyrajah Nlles

Printed in the United States of America

All rights in this book are reserved.
2<To part of the book may be used or reproduced
in any manner whatsoever without written per-
mission except in the case of brief quotations
embodied in critical articles and reviews. For
information address Harper & Rotis, Publishers,
Incorporated, 49 East 33rd Street,
New York 16, JV. Y.

Library of Congress catalog card number: 57-12986

Contents

PREFACE 9

INTRODUCTION 11

I Preaching Incarnate God (THE HINDU REFUSAL) 17

II Preaching the Crucified Christ (THE MUSLIM REFUSAL) 37

III Preaching the Risen Lord (THE BUDDHIST REFUSAL) 59

IV When the Gospel Is Proclaimed 80
V The Context of the Preacher's Task 103

NOTES 119

INDEX 121

The Preacher's Task

and the
Stone of Stumbling

Preface

In the long history of the Lyman Beecher Lectureship on
Preaching, stretching back to 1872, nearly all o the lecturers
have been famous preachers from outstanding churches. All have
been inhabitants of the Western world, and more specifically of
the English-speaking world, and the lectureship has tended to
prefer natives of Boston and Scotland. All but one have been
members of the so-called white race. It must be confessed that, as
viewed in the world perspectives of 1957, this great tradition of
lectures has been somewhat provincial.

Nearly all of the previous canons for choice of a lecturer
canons that were rooted in tradition rather than in a deliberate
desire to exclude anybody were broken in the selection for 1956-
57. Daniel Thambyrajah Niles is an Asian, a Ceylonese by birth
and residence (though he spends much time in other parts of the
world) and a Tamil by race. He speaks English superbly, but it
is not his native tongue. He is heir to twenty centuries of Western
Christianity only in that he is a great-grandson of Nathaniel
Niles, who was baptized in 1821 as the first Jaffna Tamil convert
of missionaries sent out by the American Board of Commissioners
for Foreign Missions, and is a pastor, but not of a powerful
church; more truly he is an evangelist in a country in which

10 THE PREACHER'S TASK AND THE STONE OF STUMBLING

Christians comprise a small minority o the population. In one
particular he coincides with his predecessors in the lectureship, as
this volume will suggest: he is a famous preacher, better known
in Asia and Europe than in America.

Those who heard Dr. Niles's brilliant lectures at the Yale
Divinity School in April, 1957, are not likely ever to forget them.
They were not lectures in comparative religion, as the chapter
headings might seem to indicate. Rather, as the lectures proceeded,
both a vaster and a more precise picture of Christianity emerged:
Christianity in its encounter with the other major religions of the
world, but also Christianity in its essence and its uniqueness. And
at the very center of the stage of the world emerged the picture
of Christ.

Even in the Lyman Beecher Lectures, which have acquired in
some circles the reputation of being a bit staid, Dr. Niles suc-
ceeded in being an effective evangelist. Out of his unusual back-
ground and through his exceptional gifts he brought the Good
News in a way that made it fresh and new for those who thought
they had known it all the time. He could wish for the readers of
this volume, or for his own efforts in careful preparation of the
lectures, no greater reward than that.

LISTON POPE

Introduction

"Behold I am laying in Zion a stone that will make men stumble,
a rock that will make them fall; and he who believes in him will
not be put to shame/' Rom. 9:33 *

God has acted and men must believe. That is the ground of the
preacher's task. But men find in this action of God something they
stumble over. That is the heart of the preacher's problem.

St. Paul brings together, in his quotation from the prophet
Isaiah, two sayings of the prophet. The first saying comes from
a time when Israel was being threatened by her neighbors and
the king was seeking an alliance with Assyria. Isaiah warned him
against the wisdom of making that alliance. God, he said, was
their sanctuary because God also was the conspirator against them.
Israel needed to fear God alone. If, however, they presumed on
God's presence with them and thought that that guaranteed the
strength and wisdom of their alliance with Assyria, then they
had in reality made of God a stone of stumbling and a rock of
offense. They had tripped over the truth. Men trip in this way,
says St. Paul, because their minds are fixed on what they achieve

* Unless otherwise indicated, biblical quotations are from the Revised
Standard Version.

11

12 THE PREACHER'S TASK AND THE STONE OF STUMBLING

instead of on what they believe (J. B. Phillips paraphrase, Rom.
9:32).

Let us hear the words of Isaiah himself. " 'Do not call con-
spiracy all that this people call conspiracy, and do not fear what
they fear . . . But the Lord of hosts, him you shall regard as
holy; let him be your fear . . . And he will become a sanctuary,
and a stone of offence, and a rock of stumbling to both houses of
Israel, a trap and a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem' " (Isa.
8:12-14).

The second saying of Isaiah which St. Paul has in mind be-
longs to another occasion. Judah was once again seeking an al-
liance, and Isaiah says to her: God can never be a foundation on
which to build alliances of human strength. Once it was with
Assyria that you sought such an alliance, now it is with Egypt.
Remember that the stone in Zion is in itself a sure foundation.
He who believes on it shall never be put to shame (Isa. 28 :16) .

In his letter to the Romans, St. Paul takes up both these sayings
of the prophet and uses them to point up another application of
the same truth. There is no safety, he says, for those who rely on
what they can do to fulfill the commands of God. Safety lies in
God Himself, and in committing oneself to God alone. Only
God's grace can afford safety in the face of God's demands and
God's judgment. God has set a stone in Zion, and men have
stumbled over it. They would not accept it as sufficient sanctuary,
and it has become for them a rock of offense. They fall over it and
are broken.

But a question remains: what of those on whom the Stone will
fall? This is a question that picks up a second idea in the Old
Testament about the stone of stumbling, and the classic passage
of Scripture for it is in the Book of Daniel. The king, Nebuchad-

INTRODUCTION 13

nezzar, has had a dream. His empire o gold had run its course
and ended with feet of clay: and lo, "a stone was cut out by no
human hand, and it smote the image on its feet of iron and clay,
and broke them in pieces . . . and [they] became like the chaff
of the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them
away" (Dan. 2:34-35). That is the end of all human empire,
and it is true not only in the realm of politics but also in
that of religion. The beginning may be in some golden ex-
perience of the spirit, but the end is always in feet of clay
spuriously given institutional strength, an iron too heavy for such
feet. And then! The Stone that is set in Zion falls on the image
and breaks it. "Every one who falls on that stone," said Jesus,
"will be broken to pieces; but when it falls on any one it will
crush him" (Luke 20:18).

The gospel of God in Jesus Christ is set for a sanctuary and
men stumble over it. It is God's deed, and every achievement of
the human spirit comes to judgment under it. It is also the
cornerstone of the total course of human history. All things will
be united by it. Here is a third element in the Old Testament
teaching about this Stone, an element enshrined in a common
proverb which had arisen from the experience of the people
building Solomon's temple. The Psalmist sets this proverb in its
right spiritual context when he sings:

I thank thee that thou hast answered me and hast become

my salvation.
The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief

cornerstone.

This is the Lord's doing; it is marvelous in our eyes.

[Ps. 118:21-23}

14 THE PREACHER'S TASK AND THE STONE OF STUMBLING

The building is not finished; so that while the building is still
in progress builders may throw away that odd-shaped stone as
useless for their purpose, but without it the building can neither
be joined together nor completed. It is the cornerstone in which
the whole structure is joined and on it will rest God's completing
act (Eph. 2:20). "He has made known to us," says St. Paul, "in
all wisdom and insight the mystery of his will, according to his
purpose which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fulness of
time, to unite all things in him" (Eph. 1 :9-10) . The final Architect
has prepared this cornerstone an act which is strange in our
eyes. Yet it is always the end which controls both the beginning
and the process. It is both judgment and consummation, both
standard and security. "Because you have said, 'We have made
lies our refuge, and in falsehood we have taken shelter'; there-
fore thus says the Lord God, 'Behold, I am laying in Zion for a
foundation a stone, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone, of a
sure foundation'" (Isa. 28:15-16).

The Lyman Beecher course of lectures is on the preacher's task,
so that when I received the generous invitation asking me to
deliver the course, I thought it only appropriate that I should
share an understanding that has come to me about the preacher's
task as a result of many years' experience of evangelistic contact
with friends who are adherents of other faiths. How easily in
presenting the gospel to them does the preacher himself stumble
over that stone which is laid in Zion. Instead of seeing in it
both his own sanctuary and theirs, he makes of it a barrier
between them and him. How often Jesus is presented as the
preacher's possession to be accepted by those without, rather
than as already the possession of whoever hears the gospel
only waiting to be acknowledged by them.

INTRODUCTION 15

But they do not acknowledge him! Still, the preacher's task
is to leave that stone in their path. Never mind if they pick
it up, look at it, and throw it away: they cannot keep on
throwing it away forever. It is the cornerstone of their lives
and finally they must reckon with it. The only obedience that
God asks of the preacher is that he does not attempt to change the
shape of that stone in order to make it fit more easily into some
other place in the building. That stone is meant for judgment
as well as for fulfillment. It is uncut by human hand. The
preacher is as much bound by its nature and its function as are
those to whom he preaches. Jesus Christ is both the preacher's
message and his limitation.

St. Paul made this discovery concerning the nature of the
preacher's task and announced it in one short pregnant sentence:
"We preach Christ crucified" (I Cor. 1:23). A preaching of God
in general would have been more acceptable to his contemporar-
ies as it is more acceptable to ours. But he knew, as we also
know, that no such preaching can lead to the Christian faith.
Certainly, the Christian faith is no simple Jesus-religion, it is
faith in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit,
one God in three persons, Trinity in unity and unity in Trinity.
But there is no way to the largeness of this faith except through
faith in Jesus Christ. There lies the stumbling block which men
find so difficult. And yet there is no escape for men from the
humiliation which such a stumbling block imposes. Men are
under necessity to find faith in God at the place and in the person
where God humbled Himself.

In preparing these lectures I did two things. First, I asked a
Hindu, a Buddhist, and a Muslim each to write me a letter
stating why he found it impossible to accept the Christian

16 THE PREACHER'S TASK AND THE STONE OF STUMBLING

faith. I said to them, "Do not write about all those things in
Christianity with which you find difficulty. State rather that
central affirmation o the Christian faith, as you understand it,
which you as a Hindu, or as a Buddhist, or as a Muslim, cannot
accept because it contradicts a central affirmation of your own
faith." I received these letters. Then I asked myself the questions,
"Is their understanding of the Christian faith mine also ? Is that
how I preach it? And if it is, why cannot I change my presenta-
tion in such a way as to avoid the difficulties which they find
in it?"

It will be readily seen that these questions are relevant to the
task of every preacher in any land seeking to commend Jesus
Christ to those whose real faith is not in him, whether they be
known as adherents of other religions or not. For in every case
the problem lies here, that no one accepts that it is over Jesus that
he stumbles. Everyone who stumbles claims that he stumbled
simply over some unnecessary aspect of the Church's teaching
about Jesus. But on what basis is it judged to be necessary or
unnecessary? Am I as preacher true to the historic faith of the
Church in Jesus Christ or am I creating difficulties with notions
of my own ? There are no simple answers to these questions, but
the obedience of the preacher depends on asking them and on
continually seeking an honest answer to them.

It is "the rock of offense" and "the stone of stumbling" which
we preach, and yet there is only one reason for our preaching; and
that is, lest they stumble.

I

Preaching Incarnate-God

THE HINDU REFUSAL

A Hindu friend of mine said to me one day, "We shall put
an image of Christ into every Hindu temple and then no Hindu
will see the point of becoming a Christian." It was a remark
perfectly revealing the Hindu mind. For the Hindu attitude to
Jesus Christ is to accept him and make him at home in Hinduism.
It is also an attitude which refuses to accept either the validity
or the necessity of a Hindu becoming a Christian. Mahatma
Gandhi once said, "I think of Christ as belonging, not to Chris-
tianity alone, but to the whole world, to all its people, no matter
under what name they may worship." *

"Christ is ours** Yes, certainly. Any man has the right to say
this. Jesus was part of the human race. He belongs to the heritage
of every man.. But is there not a difference, a significant difference,
between knowing Jesus as ours and knowing ourselves as his?
What is the problem of faith: that he should be received into our
life or that we should be received into his?

The kte Rev. Francis Kingsbury, who, in Ceylon and India,
was an ardent evangelist among educated Hindus in the early

17

18 THE PREACHER'S TASK AND THE STONE OF STUMBLING

years of this century, once explained the dilemma of the evange-
list's task in these words. He said, "The Hindu, in answer to the
Christian appeal, seems to me to say one thing. He says, this is
my house. My father and grandfather and great-grandfather lived
here. It is certainly an old house. It will help to put a window into
that wall. It will help to widen that door and to raise the roof. It
will help to substitute tiles for thatch. It will help to cement the
floors. But this is my ancestral house. I cannot leave it in order
to come and live in another house by whomsoever built and
however much better it is." Mr. Kingsbury himself solved this
dilemma by using his ministry during his later years in making
Jesus at home in Hinduism and helping Hindus to be at home
with Jesus. But he had to rewrite the gospel story in order to do
this, and the life of Christ which he published is quite different
from the life of Christ according to St. Mark.

When I was here in the United States for the first time,
in 1940, an incident happened in one of the colleges where I
spoke. I was a member of the University Mission of that year, and
in one of the meetings with college faculty members I had to give
an address on a subject that had been set for rne "The Christian
Faith as I Understand It." As I was speaking, the Dean of Re-
ligion in the college interrupted me. He could not bear what I was
saying. He stood up and announced that I was quite wrong in
my presentation of the Christian faith. I stopped speaking and
asked him "Why?" He replied, "You are speaking according
to the Gospel of St. John. I don't accept that Gospel as definitive.
I only accept the Gospel according to St. Mark." "All right then,"
I replied, "you had better speak, and please present the Christian
faith in consonance with St. Mark"; and I sat down. He looked
around for a moment and said, "The heart of the Christian faith

PREACHING INCARNATE-GOD 19

is the Sermon on the Mount." I jumped to my feet immediately.
"Hold on," I said, "there is no Sermon on the Mount in St. Mark.
Please stick to St. Mark." That was the end of that interruption.

Everybody who has attempted to treat Jesus simply as a human
possession has found it necessary to change the content of the
Gospel record. The necessity for that change has been argued
on many grounds the veracity of the oral tradition behind the
records, the predominance of the apologetic motive in the minds
of the Gospel writers, problems involved in accepting miracle as
historical fact, the anachronism of so-called mythological con-
cepts all these and more have been argued down the many years
of biblical criticism. These have given rise to disciplines of Bible
study which have enriched our understanding of the Gospels, but
one thing men have discovered and this is that under no pre-
text were they able to make of Jesus simply a religious teacher or
a religious reformer. His claim to be the beginning the begin-
ning of a new life, the beginning of a new relationship with God,
the source of a new birth, the architect of a new house this
claim could never be finally bypassed. His image can be put into
every Hindu temple, but it will be his image as a Hindu has
fashioned it. Christ himself will remain unaltered claiming us
as his own, and becoming ours only to the extent that we belong
to him in surrendered obedience.

St. Paul gives classic expression to the only relationship with
Jesus which is consonant with the Gospel claim; and while it is
possible to adopt other attitudes to him, we may not say, without
discounting the witness of the Gospel record, that these attitudes
are a true response to Jesus or to the deed he wrought for us
when he was made sin on our behalf (II Cor. 5:21). Here is what
St. Paul says, writing to the Church in Rome: "If we have been

20 THE PREACHER'S TASK AND THE STONE OF STUMBLING

united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united
with him in a resurrection like his. . . . For he who has died
is freed from sin. ... So you also must consider yourselves dead
to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus" (cf. Rom. 6:5-11). "I am
the vine," said Jesus himself, "Abide in me" (cf. John 15:1-4). It
is this invitation which constitutes the problem of faith, for the
problem of faith is not to receive Jesus into our life but to be re-
ceived into his: to enter into his death, to enter into his resurrec-
tion, to enter into his ministry to save the world, and finally to
enter into his glory.

Was Gandhiji wrong, then, in saying, "I think of Christ as
belonging to the whole world"? No, except that Christ belongs
to the whole world not as its possession but as its Possessor. He
is the heir of all things (Heb. 10 :2) . Indeed, was it not because he
came as possessor that they who were enjoying the possessions
which he had given them rejected him (John 1 :11) ? Here is the
Son, let us slay him, they said, and the vineyard will be ours
(Matt. 21:38). When his light becomes our enlightenment, when
his truth becomes our tradition, when his grace becomes our
heritage: then we are well on the way to rejecting him. He gives,
but we can safely possess what he gives only as we abide in him.
Our possessions must still remain his to control and even to dis-
pose of. This is true not only for the Christian but for the
Hindu, not only for the Hindu but for the Christian. He is the
light that lighteth every man and he came into the world (John
1:9).

Why. has he come? He has come to take possession of his own
in whatever household that possession may be. How will he take
possession? By claiming his own and refusing to quit that claim
however costly it may be either to him or to us.

PREACHING INCARNATE GOD 21

This fact Jesus in the world now is the basis of the
preacher's task, and his message is to proclaim this contemporane-
ousness of Jesus, to have it known, to have it understood, to have
it accepted.

There are many ways in which we can approach an under-
standing of the significance of Jesus as our contemporary, and
I have chosen to approach it in terms of a phenomenon within
the experience of the Christian Church in my part of the world
which, it seems to me, lights up this fact in a revealing way.

For many years the Roman Catholic Church in Jaffna had
set apart one of its most learned fathers for purely evangelistic
work. One day there came to him a group of people belong-
ing to one of the so-called depressed caste groups. Someone in
their family had died and they were anxious, like the high-
caste people, to beat "tom-tom" at the funeral. They were being
prohibited from doing this by men of the higher castes. They
had heard that if they became Roman Catholics, as some of
their relatives had done, they could beat the tom-tom at their
funerals. Would the father come and baptize them into the
Church? They were accepted immediately as catechumens,
they had then* tom-tom at that funeral, they were instructed
during the next weeks, and finally baptized into the Church.
Today there is a Christian community there.

Some months ago a colleague of mine in the circuit of which
I am minister prepared for baptism a widow and her children.
They were destitute and in their need had come to a minister
of the Christian Church. Could we accept them and look after
them? She is today working in one of our Christian Girls*
Boarding Schools and her children are being educated by the
Church. They are Christians.

22 THE PKEACHER'S TASK AND THE STONE OF STUMBLING

If you have read modern missionary literature and argu-
ments concerning missionary methods, you will be saying to
yourself now, "Rice-Christians that is what he is talking
about" "We have heard a great deal," you will be saying, "of
these people who have joined the Church because of ulterior
motives/' In one sense your judgment will be right, and yet
would you not have missed the real significance of what had
happened in those examples which I have given and in countless
examples of a similar kind? These people had not accepted
Jesus as the Way. They did not know anything about his
claim over then* lives. But, in their predicament, Jesus had
approached them as the only way open to them. He had set
the Church within reach of their dwellings and they had
found in the ministry of the Church a ministry to their need.
When we speak about rice-Christians we think that we are speak-
ing about the motives of people; we forget that we are speak-
ing about the methods of Jesus Christ. My great-grandfather,
Nathaniel Niles, was one of the first two men to become
Protestant Christians in Jaffna. He was baptized in 1821. His
father had died, and he, a boy of fifteen, with no one to guide
his life, came to the Rev. Miron Winslow, a missionary sent
out by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign
Missions. Mr. Winslow received him and took charge of him.
After he became a Christian, this is what he said: "I came
looking for shelter. I found a shell. And then, in that shell, I
found a pearl."

But why, it may be said, should not the Church engage in
social service without making people Christians unless such
people do really understand all that it means to accept Jesus
Christ? The Church does engage in such service; but again

PREACHING INCARNATE-GOD 23

and again the real need, even the physical, economic, and
social need of people, is met only as they become members of
the Christian community. We often forget that the Church is
part of the gospel, part of the good news of what God has done
for men and again and again it is this part of the gospel that
people accept first. This is the part whose meaning and
significance they find immediately relevant.

To speak of Jesus as contemporary is to speak of the ways in
which Jesus makes himself contemporary to men. He belongs
to all men and finds occasion to meet them on whatever road
they are traveling. Sadhu Sundar Singh met him as the answer
to his quest for peace; the widow Chellammah met him as the
answer to her need for security; the outcastes who came to Father
Gnanapragasar met him as the answer to their search for human
dignity.

Cannot the preacher leave it there? Why talk about who
Jesus is, when it is not the ministry of Jesus but affirmations
about him which stiffen the refusal of the Hindu to accept him?
The heart of the problem lies here, for if the issue is one of
Jesus claiming to be the giver and possessor of our possessions,
sooner or later he will ask inevitable questions not simply about
us but fundamentally about himself. We shall not belong securely
to Jesus merely because we have found him relevant to our
needs and problems. Indeed, he is not always relevant to us.
We shall belong to him securely only as we are convinced that
we are truly his and that he has the right to claim us as his
own, to make us relevant to him. It is at this point that the
biblical witness to him faces us with affirmations that we cannot
sidestep. It says with no uncertain voice:

He made you all things were made by him (John 1:3).

24 THE PREACHER'S TASK AND THE STONE OF STUMBLING

He found you for he came to seek and to save the lost (Luke
19:10).

He bought you having given his life as ransom (I Tim. 2:6).

He set you free from slavery to sin (John 8: 34-36).

And now, he establishes you in his service because "this gospel
of the Kingdom will be preached throughout the whole world, as
a testimony to all nations; and then the end will come" (Matt.
24:14). You are his workmen unto this end.

In the words of the Psalmist, the compelling reason behind
the message of the preacher is God's announcement when He
says, "I am God, your God" (Ps. 50:7). God has made Himself
the God of men by seeking them, by finding them, by speaking
to them; so that to all men comes the challenge to recognize in
God their God. Charles Wesley sang:

Thou, only Thou, the kind and good
And sheep-redeeming Shepherd art:
Collect Thy flock, and give them food,
And pastors after Thine own heart.

Give the pure word of general grace,
And great shall be the preachers' crowd;
Preachers, who all the sinful race
Point to the all-atoning blood.

Open their mouth, and utterance give;
Give them a trumpet-voice, to call
On all mankind to turn and live,
Through faith in Him who died for all. 2

Men need to be called to decision about Jesus Christ. The
preacher needs to help men to see that, while Jesus is always

PREACHING INCARNATE-GOD 25

prior to the preacher in finding them, they may not avoid the
demand he makes through the preacher to be recognized as he
truly is. The preacher has to see that the question of "who Jesus
is" is kept a live question, and that he remains someone with
whom people are preoccupied because he claims them and will
not quit his claim.

In the gospel story itself, Caesarea Philippi comes long after the
encounter with the disciples by the shores of Galilee, but Chris-
tian faith as set out by the Gospel record is bound up with Cae-
sarea Philippi. By the shores of Galilee Jesus became the com-
panion of a few men, at Caesarea Philippi they became his wit-
nesses. The evangelistic demand is not only that people accept
Jesus as their Saviour and Lord, but that they accept him also as
the Christ the Son of the living God (Matt. 16:16). He cannot,
in fact, be Saviour and Lord unless he is the Christ.

For the Jew, "the living God" meant God as He is alive in
history, working out His purposes in the affairs of men and
fashioning for Himself a people who will work with Him. In
confessing Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the living God, there-
fore, the substance of the confession is that in Jesus this saving
work of God in human history has entered a decisive stage; be-
cause in him God Himself has come. The decisive invasion has
taken place. What Jesus has come to do is to wage war with sin
and the devil, a war that is still being waged and for which men
and women are called to enlist in his army. It is a false pre-
occupation with men's souls which prompts us to ask the ques-
tion whom will Jesus redeem for heaven? when in the con-
text of his work both his challenge and his offer to us and to
all men is that we became his recruits on earth. We are called,
says St. Paul, to be Christ's men (Rom. 1:6).

26 THE PREACHER'S TASK AND THE STONE OF STUMBLING

'Upon this rock," said Jesus, at Caesarea Philippi, "I will build
my church; and the gates o Hell shall not prevail against it"
(Matt. 16:18, K.J.V.). The city o sin and of death is under siege.
The people of Christ are battering at the gates. Those gates resist
but they will not prevail. They will be broken down. That is
the war for which recruits are being mobilized: and to belong
to that army of the Lord of hosts is what it means to be saved.

In St. Matthew's Gospel, the passage immediately following the
narrative of the incident at Caesarea Philippi deals with the
meaning of discipleship and of salvation. Jesus says to his dis-
ciples, "If any man would come after me, let him deny himself
and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save
his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will
find it. ... For the Son of man is to come with his angels in
the glory of his Father, and then he will repay every man for
what he has done" (Matt. 16:24-27). Salvation and discipleship
belong together. Indeed, salvation is nothing more and nothing
else than discipleship. To be saved is to be Christ's disciple one
who, carrying his cross, follows Christ and so receives from
Christ according to what he has done. Salvation is by grace. We
are called into discipleship by forgiving love. We have no de-
serving of our own as to why we should be chosen. But, once
called, we enter into that salvation according to the measure of
our obedience. Our inheritance is freely given; obedience is the
way in which we inherit. "He repays every man for what he
has done."

In St, John's Gospel this involvement of the experience of
salvation in the obedience of discipleship is set out in a passage
in which the key sentence is a saying of Jesus about himself. "I
have come," he says, "as light into the world, that whoever be-

PREACHING INCARNATE GOD 27

lieves in me may not remain in darkness" (John 12:46). Holman
Hunt powerfully interprets this saying of Jesus in his picture
entitled "The Light of the World." In that picture Jesus is shown
standing outside a door that has not been opened for a long time.
The person inside the house has not been across its threshold for
many months or many years. He is abiding alone, which is to
abide in the darkness. Weeds have grown over the doorstep of that
house. Jesus stands outside with a lantern in his hand. He is
dressed as a king is dressed, since he comes as King seeking
dominion over his own. His crown is of thorns, since the way
he will take in fulfilling his mission is the way of the cross. He
has come to bring salvation from darkness to the person inside
that house: but his salvation depends on coming out with Jesus
and sharing with him the task which is his. He has come as the
Light of the World, and they who would share his life must share
his task. They will walk in his light as they walk with him.

Who, then, is saved or who are they who have rendered him
obedience? We have said, "He comes to take possession of his
own." Who are they who have helped him to bring under his
control that which is truly his ? We can only answer this ques-
tion humanly, for only he knows his own. He said so. "I know
my own," he said, "and my own know me ... and they will
heed my voice" (John 10:1446). But humanly speaking we can
think of many persons whose work has extended the dominion
of Christ over people and over realms of life. The Old Covenant
was a preparation for Jesus: John the Baptist preached that
preparation and himself prepared the way for the ministry of
Christ. The truths of the great philosophers of ancient Greece
belonged to Jesus: the Apologists of the early Church sought to
bring these truths into the service of Christ. The Hindu insight

28 THE PREACHER'S TASK AND THE STONE OF STUMBLING

into life's unity and sacredness belongs to Jesus: it has come to
flower in a singular life of Christian discipleship in Albert
Schweitzer, a great Christian student of Hinduism. The inspira-
tion of Christ drove Raja Ram Mohan Ray and Keshab Chandra
Sen into a movement for the reform of Hinduism; Jesus pressed
Mahatma Gandhi along a road of political technique which drew
its inspiration largely from his Sermon on the Mount. And so
the list can be multiplied., including those whose life and service
we cannot deny that Jesus will own, but who have not known
his name or confessed his influence.

"Why worry then," you will probably say, "about the question
as to who Jesus is? Let each man believe as he likes, and let us,
who are committed to preaching the gospel, preach Christ by all
means but cease our consuming concern with the building up of
the Church. 1 * Does not the temptation of the preacher lie pre-
cisely here, that, on the one hand, he desires to circumscribe the
outreach of the ministry of the risen and ascended Lord by the
scope of the witness of the Church; and, on the other hand, he is
tempted to minimize the significance of the Church's task be-
cause he is unable, in terms of that task, to determine who are
saved? Simply because there is a Christian view of the unbeliever
as he exists within the mercy of God in Jesus as Lord, that view
does not validate the unbeliever's view about himself or his beliefs
about Jesus. It is part of the preacher's task to maintain this dis-
tinction. To put the matter differently, the issues of salvation and
damnation lie within the ministry of the Christ himself, while
only the issue of salvation lies within the particular ministry and
witness of the Church, so that, even though the ministry of the
Church is within the ministry of the Christ, it has its own par-
ticular function. It is concerned with bearing faithful witness to

PREACHING INCARNATE-GOD 29

Jesus himself, with proclaiming who he is and with demanding
true faith both in him and about him. The Church can, there-
fore, never accept that a substitute for this faith is possible:
neither any form of service to man or to God, nor any achieve-
ment of the good life. Thus the preacher's task, while it is set
within the context of the ministry of Jesus the risen and ascended
Lord who is at work everywhere and among all men, is neverthe-
less defined by the Church's specific commission, which is to
proclaim salvation in the name of Christ and to gather into his
Church them that are being saved. "We have received grace and
apostleship," says St. Paul, "to bring about obedience to the faith
for the sake of his name among all the nations'* (Rom. 1 :5) .

There is no Saviour but Jesus and they who are saved are
always saved by him. That is true without qualification. There
is no other name given under heaven by which men can be
saved (Acts 4:12). Hence the invitation to men to share in this
salvation which Jesus offers by serving him in Christian disciple-
ship, by obedience to the faith for the sake of his name. Salva-
tion is what God is doing to save, and to be saved is to partici-
pate in this saving activity of God.

The whole testimony of the Bible is about God's action in
salvation, how He has chosen to fashion a people for Himself in
order that they may be the instrument of His saving will. This
people He saves from their enemies, them he cleanses from their
sins, to them He gives the Holy Spirit of power, and of them He
asks that they share His life and His purpose. The message of
Jesus was consistently couched in these terms. He invited men
to share in his cross-bearing (Matt- 16:24), to lose their life for
his sake (Matt. 16-25), to abide in him (John 15 :4), and to per-

30 THE PREACHER'S TASK AND THE STONE OF STUMBLING

form those works which he has prepared for them to walk in
(Eph. 2:10).

In the first declaration of the gospel, as recorded in the Acts
of the Apostles, St. Peter answers the question of his hearers with
these words: "Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the
name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you
shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit" (Acts 2:38). Speaking
of this gift, St. Paul makes this comment: "It is the Spirit him-
self bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God,
and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with
Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also
be glorified with him" (Rom. 8:16-17). The members of the
community of Christ are both recipients of and fellow workers
with that grace of God which is active unto salvation. To its
number, day by day, are added those who are being saved. They
enter into eternal life, which is the life of the Son whom God
gave to the world because He loved the world, and they who
beKeve in him become useful to him. Otherwise they would have
perished and become useless. "God so loved the world that he
gave his only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not
perish" (John 3:16).

Let us consider the letter which my Hindu friend wrote in
answer to my request:

My dear Niles,

With reference to your question why a Hindu finds it difficult
to accept Christianity, may I say that there are two fundamentals of
the Christian faith which a Hindu can never accept.

Christianity maintains that Salvation is only possible through the
belief in the special Revelation of Christ as the Saviour of mankind.
It maintains that on the Judgment Day all Souls are not destined

PREACHING INCARNATE GOD

31

to be saved. Some may be and some may not be. Hinduism, on the
other hand, accepts all religions as true and believes that individuals
born in them will attain salvation if they honestly follow the spiritual
path preached by them. The Vedas proclaim that "God is one
though the sages call it variously.'* In Sivagnana Siddhyar, an im-
portant scripture of Saivite Hinduism, it is said: "Whatever God
you worship, even as Him, Shiva will appear there." Or, as it is
stated in the Bhagavad Gita, one of the scriptures of Vaishnavite
Hinduism, "Howsoever men approach Me, even so do I accept them,
for on all sides whatever path that they choose is Mine/'

Also Hinduism preaches the doctrine of Re-incarnation and
maintains that all Souls will ultimately reach the Feet of God.
Re-birth in the world is essential for Souls till they attain final
emancipation. No Soul can do this in one birth, so that the doctrine
of Re-incarnation is a fundamental article of Faith.

You can understand, therefore, why Hindus cannot accept Chris-
tianity as a rational faith since it denies the possibility of salvation
to all Souls and the possibility of attaining salvation through re-
ligions other than itself.

Yours sincerely,

NADARAJAH

As you have read this letter, one thing must have struck
you immediately. It is based on a nonhistorical understanding
o the function of religion. People are souls. Their embodied life
in this world is only of instrumental value. Here on earth, in
life after Kfe, their salvation is worked out, and when they are
saved their life on earth will cease. No wonder the Hindu
misunderstands the Christian teaching about salvation, because
the Christian faith insists that history is itself the story of God's
saving activity. People are not souls in bodies, but whole persons
body, mind, and spirit who participate and are called to

32 THE PREACHER'S TASK AND THE STONE OF STUMBLING

participate in God's activity in the world and its historical
process, and whose lives are continuously one, the life on earth
being fulfilled beyond death in the resurrection of the body.
The Hindu needs no doctrine of redemption within history.
The Christian is lost without it That is why the Christian faith
insists that the Incarnation, the Cross, and the Resurrection
are not only acts of revelation but also of redemption. In Jesus
not only was there revealed the mind and purpose of the
eternal God, but there was also done in him a deed which
brought salvation to mankind. It has been said that we saw on
Calvary what was always true of God. But this is only a partial
statement. Something happened on Calvary for the first time.
God's redemptive activity within history reached its culmina-
tion there. So that a new possibility has been opened up for man
in Jesus Christ. He can and is invited to participate in the move-
ment of salvation of which Jesus is the beginning and the
ending, the pioneer and the goal-(Heb. 12:2).

My friend Nadarajah is surely wrong in saying that "Chris-
tianity maintains that Salvation is only possible through the
belief in the special Revelation of Christ as the Saviour of
mankind/' What the Christian faith affirms, rather, is that Jesus
Christ is the only Saviour of men and that the experience of
salvation consists in and is dependent on sharing in his saving
action and activity. The preacher's task, therefore, is to call men
into this experience. His is simply the responsibility to bear
testimony to Jesus Christ. In other words, the issues of Salva-
tion and Damnation cannot be stated in terms of men's belief
or unbelief in the special revelation of Christ: they can only be
stated in terms of the outreach of the work and ministry of
Christ himself. This means that it is outside the preacher's com-

PREACHING INCARNATE-GOD 33

petence or commission to pass judgment on what others claim to
be their experience of salvation; his business is only to invite them
to acknowledge Jesus Christ as their Saviour. And, in the last
analysis, the Hindu refuses this invitation because he cannot
accept the Christian estimate of the historical process or the
Christian significance of human history. He cannot see how
salvation could be linked with participation in a historical move-
ment. The Incarnation of God in Jesus Christ is only seemingly
something which the Hindu can accept. In reality that is his
stumbling block. God intervenes in history, God becomes an
"avatar" that is a Hindu commonplace; but that God becomes
man and remains Immanuel God with us is an intolerably
time-conditioned faith for the Hindu mind.

The Hindu doctrine of reincarnation has the same implica-
tion. If reincarnation is true, then persons are only "dramatis
personae." The acts and scenes change and the same people play
different roles dressed differently for different parts. The drama
has meaning while it lasts, but when it ends only the actors are
left, each a separate individual, their relationship to one another
on the stage having no permanent significance. A Hindu friend
of mine said to me one day, "I am quite sure that my son is my
grandfather." The view of personality which lies behind such
a statement is radically different from the Christian view. Salva-
tion, according to the Christian faith, is salvation of the person
and not simply of his soul: and the person preserves his historical
identity beyond death. The end and goal of human history is not
a fellowship of souls either with God or within God, it is a king-
dom a new heaven and a new earth into which will be brought
the treasures of the nations, into which will come the kings of the
earth (Rev. 21:1,26,24). This is certainly picture language, but

34 THE PREACHER'S TASK AND THE STONE OF STUMBLING

it is intended to affirm the central conviction of the Christian
faith that history itself will be redeemed.

Evangelism is the struggle for the salvation of this world. It
is the continuation of the ministry of the Incarnate God who
came that the world might be redeemed. Apart from this under-
standing of evangelism the Christian claim concerning the
uniqueness of Christ is pointless. The evangelistic concern is not
with the question as to how Christ will deal hereafter with those
who in this life have not found faith in him: its concern is simply
with the fact that now he calls all men to repent and to perform
deeds worthy of their repentance (Acts 17:30, 26:20). "Repent,"
says St. Paul, "because He has fixed a day on which He will
judge the world in righteousness by a man whom He has ap-
pointed, and of this He has given assurance to all men by raising
him from the dead" (Acts 17:31). Jesus Christ is man's Saviour
as well as Judge. The call to repentance is the call to belong to
him, to share his life and to share his task.

Can it be that there are some who belong to him who do
not know it; or that some, who say they belong, do not belong
at all? Jesus taught us a parable which sheds light on this ques-
tion. "A man had two sons; and he went to the first and said,
*Son, go and work in the vineyard today.' And he answered, 'I
will not'; but afterward he repented and went. And he went to
the second and said the same; and he answered, *I go, sir,' but
did not go" (Matt. 21:28-30). Obedience is the only proof of
repentance, but all men must repent. The son who said "no" as
well as the son who said "y^" both need repentance. There
we must leave it. Repentance toward Jesus Christ is the only
true response that men can make to God's action in the Incarna-
tion. The plane of human history has now become and is now

PREACHING INCARNATE-GOD 35

revealed as the decisive realm of God's redeeming activity.

Let me close by inviting your attention to an incident in our
Lord's life which, to my mind at least, illuminates the central
problem we have been dealing with in this address (Matt. 19:16-
30). Jesus was setting out on his journey to Jerusalem. There
the work of redemption was to be wrought, there he must accom-
plish his death. On the way a rich man came to him. He was rich
both in his material possessions and in his moral and religious
attainments. He asked Jesus a question: "What good thing must
I do to inherit eternal life?" "It is not things that are good,"
replied Jesus. "Only God is good. Why ask me about that which
is good as if it were a thing? Have you obeyed the command-
ments?" "Yes," he had. And yet he lacked one thing: he did not
belong to the company of the disciples of Jesus. (That is the lack
which is always the concern of the preacher.) "Go," said Jesus,
"sell what you have, give it to the poor and come, follow me."
At that saying his countenance fell, and he went away sorrowful;
for he had great possessions.

Will he be saved ? Jesus looked at his disciples and said to them,
"With men this is impossible, but with God all things are pos-
sible. . . . "And every one who has left houses or brothers or
sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my name's
sake, will receive a hundredfold, and inherit eternal life" (Matt.
19:26, 29).

We get the preacher's task all out of focus when we set it in
the context of the sovereign activity of God's grace in redeeming
persons for heaven: the preacher's task is firmly set within the
context of the activity of God's redeeming grace as it seeks and
finds and makes disciples for his work on earth. Our commission
is to make disciples for Jesus Christ among all the nations, to

36 THE PREACHER'S TASK AND THE STONE OF STUMBLING

baptize them in his name, to teach them to observe all that
Christ commanded, and to invite them, as they too share in this
commission, to participate in the promise of Christ's perpetual
presence and companionship. "The Lord Jesus," say the last
verses of St. Mark's Gospel, "was received up into heaven, and
sat down at the right hand of God. And they went forth, and
preached everywhere, the Lord working with them, and confirm-
ing the word by the signs that followed" (Mark 16:19-20 A.S.V.).
That is the point at which we render our obedience in the face
of the Hindu refusal and that is our experience: Jesus Christ
who is Lord, working with his disciples and himself confirming
their message by his signs.

Me, if Thy grace vouchsafe to use,
Meanest of all Thy creatures, me:
The deed, the time, the manner choose,
Let all my fruit be found of Thee ;
Let all my works in Thee be wrought,
By Thee to full perfection brought.

My every weak, though good design,
O'errule, or change, as seems Thee meet;
Jesus, let all my work be Thine!
Thy work, Lord, is all complete,
And pleasing in Thy Father's sight;
Thou only hast done all things right 8

II

Preaching the Crucified Christ

THE MUSLIM REFUSAL

It is an essential part of the Hindu faith that truth is universal.
Truth is universal not only in the sense that anything which
claims to be truth must be universally true, but also in the sense
that no claim to truth must be made on behalf of anything which
is not a universal. The religious experiences of the Hindu saints
and sages are true experiences because it is possible for anyone
to have those experiences. The Christian, on the other hand, sets
Jesus apart. He claims that the relationship between Jesus and
the Father is singular and unique^ and he holds that this rela-
tionship between Jesus and the Father is what makes possible a
derivative relationship between men and God the Father, on the
one hand, and men and God the Son, on the other. The offer of
the Christian faith to men is that through Jesus they can live as
sons of the Father and also as brothers of Jesus Christ, he who
was not ashamed to call us brothers (Heb. 2:11). This mediating
function of Jesus the Hindu denies, not in the sense that Jesus
is not mediator but in the sense that he need not be. There is no
universal claim that can be made about Jesus Christ. He is a
historical figure and, while there are illustrations in history of the
Various ways in which God deals with men and men can come

37

38 THE PREACHER'S TASK AND THE STONE OF STUMBLING

to an experience of God, there is no historical example of religious
truth which can be set up as either normative or determinative.

Certainly there are tendencies within Hinduism to claim
uniqueness of truth for some particular apprehension of God.
In the Saiva Siddhanta, for instance, the claim is made that the
truth of Saiva Siddhanta is the only saving truth. As one of their
scriptures has it: "If one learning alien religions enters the
orthodox fold and plods through the practices enjoined therein,
he will then reach the heights of the Saiva Siddhanta; and prac-
tising its precepts reach the feet of Siva." 1 But this truth is not
pegged down in history as is the case with Jesus Christ. Indeed,
saving truth is attained as the soul climbs step by step through
birth after birth. The Hindu mind simply finds it impossible to
conceive that something which happened in human history can
be affirmed as the truth, the unique way to truth, and the only
true way to ultimate blessedness.

Religious truth, the Hindu would say, is relative to the con-
dition that a soul has attained in its upward climb. I have
heard Hindu thinkers contend, for instance, that "materialism"
can be true religion for souls that have arrived only at that stage.
Thus, in terms of this point of view, what men need, and the only
thing which they need, is to learn and apply the methods of
those who have already attained. There is not just one method,
there are many ways of attaining because there have been many
ways by which men have attained. It is teachers of the re-
ligious life who are needed, rishis who know and who wiU
teach. Therefore, for the Hindu, the claim that Jesus is Mediator
can be an acceptable claim purely in the sense that personal
mediation can be a method of attaining salvation. That is the way
by which Jesus helps.

PREACHING THE CRUCIFIED CHRIST 39

But just here is where the problem begins, for Jesus cannot be
Mediator unless it is true that he is alive and contemporary. A
rishi who is dead cannot claim to mediate between man and God.
Mediation is an ongoing activity. Either Jesus does mediate, in
which case the Gospel affirmation is true that he rose from the
dead and ascended into heaven; or he does not mediate, in which
case we can dispense with belief in his resurrection and ascension
as unnecessary frills which religious devotion has provided for
a simple human life.

In other words, does it not seem curious that a Hindu should
say that there is salvation according to the way of Christianity
and yet maintain that this way which is the way of mediation
through Jesus Christ, alive and active among men, is unaccept-
able? Jesus Christ, the Hindu says, is only a man who lived and
died. The Hindu may concede that Jesus is God in human form
but this concession is naturally colored by the Hindu view of
incarnation. In the words of Krishna to Arjuna in the Bhagavad-
Gita:

When Righteousness

Declines, when Wickedness

Is strong, I rise, from age to age, and take

Visible shape, and move a man with men,

Succouring the good, thrusting the evil back,

And setting Virtue on her seat again.

Who knows the truth touching my births
on earth

And my divine work, when he quits the
flesh

Puts on its load no more, falls no
more down

To earthly birth: to Me he comes. 2

40 THE PREACHER'S TASK AND THE STONE OF STUMBLING

The necessity of an incarnation in this sense is the necessity for
a "deus ex machina." But even then, salvation is not attained by
what is wrought through such an incarnation; salvation is the
result of knowing Him who thus becomes incarnate again and
again.

Through birth after birth the soul attains to this knowledge
until with perfect knowledge the soul is set free from birth
itself. How natural, then, it is for the Hindu to accept Jesus as
one of the "visible shapes" that God has taken; and how necessary
it Is for him to deny this same Jesus whom the Gospel record
sets forth as permanently moored in human history as man's
living Mediator. The Christian preacher must beware of the
subtle temptation to adjust his message to this mood of self-
contradiction that he will find in his hearers with respect to their
attitude to Jesus a mood which is common not only among
Hindus but also among all men. Men do tend to say "yes" and
"no" to Jesus at the same time, and the Christian preacher must
avoid the desire to build his message of Jesus exclusively on the
"yes." In the Gospel of St. John, Jesus himself is represented as
avoiding that "yes." "Jesus did not trust himself to them," says
the Evangelist, "because he knew all men and needed no one to
bear witness of man; for he himself knew what was in man"
(John 2:24-25).

The form which this attitude of self-contradiction toward
Jesus takes in Islam is quite different from that in Hinduism. In
fact, compared to the attitude of the Hindu, the Muslim refusal
of Jesus Christ is clearer and more consistent. Jesus Christ is
only a man. Christianity is, therefore, false as a faith. The very
notion of mediation is a false notion. There can be no locus
in human history of which it can be said there, within teach of

PREACHING THE CRUCIFIED CHRIST 41

human hand, God has come. God can speak to men and show
them the way to Him; God can enter men's hearts in His activity
of grace and lead them to Him; but God cannot Himself come
ind tabernacle with men. The Word cannot become flesh nor
dwell among us. There is no Immanuel God with us.

Let us examine at this point the letter which I received
from my Muslim friend:

My dear Niles,

Your question is "Why I, as a Muslim, find it impossible to
accept the Christian faith? 1 ' My main answer must be that I find
it impossible to accept that Jesus Christ is God. Of course, I do not
believe that He claimed to be God, but the Christian Church makes
that claim about him. This is a false and unnecessary claim. Indeed,
the sin which underlies this claim, the sin of "Shirk" (an obscuring
of belief in the oneness of God), is the one sin which, according
to the Quran, God will not forgive.

No Muslim can accept any teaching which does violence either
to the majesty or to the unity of God,

"He, Allah, is alone. Allah is He on Whom all depend/*

"I bear witness that None deserves to be worshipped but Allah
and I further bear witness that Muhammad is the Apostle of
Allah."

To speak of Jesus as an incarnation of God is to sin against
God's majesty as well as His unity. It is an act of overweening pride
on man's part to claim equality with God again, let me repeat,
I do not believe Jesus made this claim. Also, the Christian doctrine
of incarnation involves Divinity in human flesh. How can this be?
It is too materialistic a conception and derogates from God's awful
majesty. Also, the Christian teaching is contrary to the unity of
God. There is only one God and no other.

I have said that the Christian teaching about Jesus is not only

42 THE PREACHER'S TASK AND THE STONE OF STUMBLING

false but that it is unnecessary. It is unnecessary because God deals
with man's condition by revealing His will to him through prophets,
and God's final will has been revealed through Muhammad the last
and the greatest prophet. An "incarnation" is a completely unnec-
essary idea.

"There is no God but God."

Yours sincerely,

RASHID

The attitude of refusal is quite clear in this letter, but the con-
tradictory "yes" is also present. That Jesus is a prophet the letter
would allow, but he is not Jesus as set out in the Gospel record.
The Gospel record presents him as a Saviour from sin but, accord-
ing to this letter, no such Saviour is necessary. God deals with
sin by sending prophets to call men to repentance.

Here one of the stern necessities of true Christian preaching
becomes clear. No one can proclaim Jesus as Saviour if he does not
also share the Biblical understanding of sin. Let the preacher
compromise with any of the modern disguises for sin and he has
no message to proclaim. Jesus simply becomes for him an addi-
tional tool in the hands of the psychiatrist or, at best, one of the
great reformers in human history. "An Incarnation is a com-
pletely unnecessary idea" says the letter from my Muslim friend.
It is, if sin is not what it is. Of absolute importance for Christian
preaching is a true biblical understanding of the nature of sin.
It is only in terms of such an understanding that the Gospel
claim that Jesus is God-become-flesh makes sense.

I read some years ago a story of a translator of the Bible who
was engaged in rendering it in one of the African dialects. He
could not find a suitable substitute for the word "sin." There
was no such concept among the people who spoke that dialect.

PREACHING THE CRUCIFIED CHRIST 43

At last he compromised by using a word which meant "some-
thing bad to eat." In many minds today that is all that sin means
something that offends the accepted taste. From such an of-
fense no Deliverer is necessary, not even a prophet is wanted.
All that is needed is to find for each sin its proper disguise
and so make it socially acceptable. Gambling becomes sweep-
stakes for hospitals, drunkenness becomes a New Year's spree,
adultery becomes free love, emotional excess becomes "rock and
roll," and so on and so forth through every sphere of life-
personal, national, and international.

How does the Bible speak about sin? It speaks about ski in
relation to the act and purpose of God in creation. Man was
created in God's image. Of all God's creation he alone is a
dependent being. He is man because in him there is God's re-
flection. God and man are "toward" one another. But man sought
to break this his relatedness to God. He listened to the doubt
of God's love which Satan whispered to him. The law of your
dependence on God, said the serpent, is designed to keep you in
dependence. If you break it you will be free of God and then
you can deal with him on equal terms. Why should it be that
God should be the one to decide for you what is good and what
is evil? You must be in a position to decide that for yourself
(Gen. 3:4).

Out of the doubt about the wisdom of God's love for us arises
our anxiety about ourselves. Out of the bid to live independently
of God's provision for us comes our bondage to our provision
for ourselves. Sin robs us of Paradise. "Cast all your anxieties on
him [God]," says St. Peter, "for he cares about you. . . . Your
adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking
some one to devour" (I Pet. 5:7-8). The devil is adversary even

44 THE PREACHER'S TASK AND THE STONE OF STUMBLING

though he speaks to us like a friend and as though in our interest.
He makes use of our anxieties to lead us into ways where we may
not go. Jesus said, "Be not anxious for the morrow," for the
temptation that belongs to the anxiety of each day is as much
as you can tackle. "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof"
(Matt. 6 34).

How is man to set himself free from his anxieties ? How is he
to regain his fellowship of dependence on God?

Let me digress a little at this point to avoid a possible mis-
understanding. Sin is not something that began in the Garden of
Eden. The Genesis account of man's sin is an account which
seeks to make plain the nature of sin and not its origin. The
human problem is not that sin originated but that it is original.
It is original to human nature and to man's predicament. Some
years ago a friend told me a story about the late Dr. William
Adams Brown, the well-known professor of theology at Union
Theological Seminary. It seems that Dr. Brown met after many
years a college-mate of his who had entered some other profession
than theological teaching and who was a leading Christian lay-
man. Dr, Brown is said to have asked his friend in the course of
a conversation: "John, do you believe in original sin?" To which
the reply was, "Yes, I have a son." Dr. Brown asked again,
"John, do you believe in the total depravity of human nature?"
To which the friend replied, "No, that doctrine is an exaggera-
tion of Martin Luther.'* William Adams Brown commented,
"You wait till you have another son."

There we have the problem not where sin came from but
what it is: that which sets God and man apart and so breaks
the human mirror into fragments and distorts God's image in

PREACHING THE CRUCIFIED CHRIST 45

man. How is this image to be restored? How is Paradise to be
regained?

Man cannot just return to Paradise. There is an angel who
stands barring the way and he carries a flaming sword. He guards
the way to the tree o life (Gen. 3:24). The wages o sin is death
and there is no escape. The Egyptian embalmer has attempted
to rescue flesh and bone from corruption; the artist can preserve
the features in sculpture, or portrait, or photograph; modern
techniques can record the voice on tape or disk and actions on
films; memory can recall the emotions with which a person
was once surrounded; friends or followers can continue the pur-
poses to which a man was dedicated; books can record and keep a
man's thoughts; but ultimately death wins out. The story of
human culture can be set out as a record of man's perpetual strug-
gle against death but still the angel stands and wields his
flaming sword.

But why cannot man give up this struggle? Why must there
be this perpetual contest with death? Here again we are face
to face with something original in human nature. Man was made
for God and for eternal life and there is no rest for him till
he attains his destiny. He must get to God but death bars the
way, and there is no way around death or through death as long
as he is a sinner.

The history of man's search to get out of this predicament
is not only the history of culture but also the history of morals.
Through all the history of culture man's contest with death
is a frontal contest; his search for the moral life is an at-
tempt on the part of man to overcome the reason for death,
his sinfulness itself. Can he not render obedience to God by
living the good life and so win back his experience of God's

46 THE PREACHER'S TASK AND THE STONE OF STUMBLING

fellowship? The greatest achievements of men have been gained
in this attempt to live the good life: but always the fruit has been
bitter. Those who have contended most earnestly for the prize
have found that sin is an infection against which there is no
protection; while those who were more easily satisfied have found
that in the process of their attaining the good life they have had to
reduce the laws of God into forms that made them humanly at-
tainable. It was not possible to obey the law "Thou shalt not
commit adultery" but it was possible to obey the explanations of
that law as set out in the tradition of the elders. A good part of
the Gospel record is the story of how Jesus set the Law free from
the tradition of the elders and made it again the Law of God.
But once that is done, man is back again where he started.
St. Paul knew this problem in all its naked strength. "If it
had not been for the law," he said, "I should not have known sin.
I should not have known what it is to covet if the law had not
said, Tou shall not covet.' But sin, finding opportunity in the
commandment, wrought in me all kinds of covetousness. Apart
from the law sin lies dead. I was once alive apart from the law,
but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died; the
very commandment which promised life proved to be death to
me. For sin, finding opportunity in the commandment, de-
ceived me and by it killed me" (Rom. 7:7-11). And yet this
very experience, which here he describes in the past tense, he
describes again in the present continuous tense in a later para-
graph. But there the description ends differently. "I do not under-
stand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do
the very thing I hate. ... So then it is no longer I that do it,
but sin which dwells within me. ... I can will what is right,
but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil

PREACHING THE CRUCIFIED CHRIST 47

I do not want is what I do. ... So I find it to be a law that
when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. . . . Wretched
man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?
Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! . . . There
is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ
Jesus" (Rom. 7:15-8:1). .

Why does St. Paul's description of man's contest with sin end
differently in this passage? Because, while the contest is still
bitter and prolonged, the sinner himself is in a new position. St.
Paul's cry of thanksgiving is simply Thank God, I am not
what I am.

How is that? A new possibility had dawned for man. In Jesus,
the Kingdom of God had come. The saints of the Old Testament
lived by the gifts of God's grace. They knew the experience of
forgiveness, they knew the meaning of God's guidance, they
knew what it was to live by faith in God's providence; but now
there was a new possibility for man. The vine whose grapes he
ate had now been planted on earth and he could himself share the
whole life of the vine. In Jesus, God had come among men to be
ImmanueL A meeting place had been set where man and God
could meet and share one life. Paradise had been planted in
human history. Saul the Jew had been under the Law, Paul the
Christian was in Christ. The Law was still binding, the contest
with sin was still fierce, but now it was essentially a different
struggle. Then it had been a struggle to become what he was not,
now it was a struggle to become what he was. Then it had been a
straining after what he did not possess, now it was a straining to
taste fully what he did possess. Then it had been a struggle with
death, now death was over. Saul had been slain by the love of
Jesus Christ. He had been shattered by the death of one whom he

48 THE PREACHER'S TASK AND THE STONE OF STUMBLING

had helped to kill, and now found himself alive in a living Lord
who had risen from the dead.

The Muslim refusal of the Christian faith assumes that it is
enough for God to deal with men and for man to deal with God
in the way recorded for us in the Old Testament. All that was
necessary was a final prophet who would give clearer teaching
about the way to live according to God's laws. God is merci-
ful and sovereign, and man not only can but also ought to
leave it at that. The Christian faith, on the other hand, arises
from the fact that whatever man may think or be satisfied
with, God has acted in Jesus Christ to open for man a new
possibility apart from the law, whereby instead of the law being
a gateway to God's grace it becomes the avenue by which
man can render grateful thanks to God for what God has freely
done. It is not that Jesus Christ enables us to obey the law but
that he delivers us from it and thereby opens to us the possibility
of making obedience to the law our offering to him. (Perhaps
I should make it clear that by the use of the word "law" I do not
intend only the law of God as revealed to us in the Old Testa-
ment but all those laws which any man feels as a pressure on his
conscience and on his spirit.)

Earlier we spoke about human history as the realm not only
of revelation but also of redemption. In our dealing with the
Muslim difficulties about the Christian faith we are back again
at the same question. The Muslim can ask why it was neces-
sary for God to act in the way in which the Christian claims
He did act. There is no answer to that question. God is the
architect of human history and of man. He creates the situa-
tion to which man must respond. The story of religion often

PREACHING THE CRUCIFIED CHRIST 49

tends to become a story of God's response to man's need; it is
rather the story of man's response to God's action.

The New Testament draws a line across human history with-
out any qualms or hesitation. Then were the times of ignorance,
now He calls men to repent (Acts 17:30); then He spoke in
diverse ways, now He has spoken by a Son (Heb. 1 :1,2) ; then the
hardness of men's hearts was a determining consideration, now
it is not (Mark 10 :4-9) ; then the Kingdom had not come, now
it has come (Matt. 12:28). Then it was B, a, now it is A. D. The
Muslim difficulty is fundamentally this difficulty of accepting the
Christian understanding of the nature of human history. We have
already seen the way in which this difficulty presents itself to the
Hindu, now we see the way in which it presents itself to the
Muslim. A real incarnation of God as man challenges the Hindu
refusal to accept truth as bound to a time event; a real mediation
between God and man challenges the Muslim refusal to acknowl-
edge that any change has taken place in God's sovereign way with
men. If through countless centuries God dealt with man
through prophets and lawgivers, teachers and sages, why believe
that God has changed this method now, and that only two
thousand years ago? Surely it is enough to know that God makes
His will plain to men in order to elicit their obedience, enough
to know that God who is sovereign judge is also merciful.

The answer of the Christian faith is that the heritage of man
is God Himself and that in the fullness of time God made this
heritage available to man. Why the fullness of time arrived only
two thousand years ago is a fruitless question. The important
thing is that it has arrived and that we are those on whom the
"New Age" has come (Heb. 6:5). In the Gospel story we have a
vivid record of the controversy between the Jews and Jesus on this

50 THE PREACHER'S TASK AND THE STONE OF STUMBLING

very point. Nicodemus is puzzled that in Jesus there is a new
beginning^ so new that it can be spoken o only as a new birth
(John 3:1-15). The woman of Samaria wants to know whether
Jesus is greater than Jacob (John 4:12), the Pharisees want to
know whether Jesus is older than Abraham (John 8:57). The
answer of Jesus is a simple one. I am, he says, what the Father
intended for you from the very beginning. Before Abraham was, I
am (John 8:58). In him was begun that which in me finds com-
pletion. You speak of the water of Jacob's well, I am the water of
life (John 4:14). You speak about God's manna from heaven, I
am the bread of life (John 6:35). You cherish this temple built
over a period of forty-six years, I am the temple that will replace
it (John 2:19,20). There is the old, here is the new. The Kingdom
of God has come.

But, the Muslim refusal goes on to say, how can this be true
when, for its very truth, it depends on involving God in human
flesh and, what is worse, involving that flesh in death on a cross ?
The Christian faith cannot be true apart from the story of the
Cross, and this story cannot be true because it derogates from
God's majesty. Here is the crux of the matter. St. Paul speaks of
the glory of God as revealed in the face of Jesus Christ (II Cor.
4:6). St. John speaks of the glory of Jesus as glory belonging to
the only-begotten of a father (John 1:18). The seer of Patmos
speaks of the glory of the Lamb (Rev. 21:23). The word "glory"
in the New Testament is a word about the splendor of God's love
poured out, a splendor which, in the words of John the Evange-
list, became manifest in its fullness when Jesus hung on a cross.
"The Spirit had not been given," he says, "because Jesus was
not yet glorified" (John 7:39). "Glorify thou me in thy own pres-
ence," prays Jesus to his Father as he prepares to go to the Cross,

PREACHING THE CRUCIFIED CHRIST 51

"with the glory which I had with thee before the world was
made" (John 17:5).

The word "glory" is certainly different from the word
"majesty/ 1 but in that difference Ees the Christian differentia.
God's glory is God's majesty become operative on man's behalf.
Glory is majesty active at the behest of love.

It is not surprising that the Quran, having affirmed that Jesus
is only a prophet, does not take the line which the Jews took in
saying that Jesus died on the Cross but did not rise again. Instead,
it affirms that Jesus did not die on the Cross. As the Quran has it,
"The Jews did not kill him, nor did they crucify him; but he was
made to appear to them like one crucified." 3

Why this denial of the Crucifixion ? Because, if the Crucifixion
is true, then it is not enough to deny that Jesus is Incarnate God
on the ground that an incarnation derogates from God's majesty;
it becomes essential to meet the challenge of the Cross itself which
presents the message that in Jesus it is precisely God's majesty
which is involved in the service of God's love, "For God so loved
the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him
should not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16). "God was
in Christ reconciling the world to himself" (II Cor. 5:19). "God
shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died
for us" (Rom. 5:8). It is God who acts. The preacher must always
hold to this truth; for any presentation of the Cross which treats
it as if God was enabled to forgive sin because of it, will be a
serious distortion of the fact that the Cross itself is the result
of God's act of forgiveness, and a necessary result. Why neces-
sary? Because, if God and men were to meet in Jesus Christ and
have fellowship there, then it was essential that men should be
set free from their bondage to sin. The strength of sin lay in its

52 THE PREACHER'S TASK AND THE STONE OF STUMBLING

being incognito. It was always active in association with some
good. It needed to be exposed, to be brought out into the light,
to be placarded before men. Jesus did this by forcing sin, in its
dealings with Him, to come out into the open. When gray and
gray have a fight, then gray always wins. In Jesus the fight was
between black and white, darkness and light. On the Cross sin
was exposed. It had to come out into the open in order to kill
Jesus. He made an open show of sin and stripped it naked, says
St. Paul (Col. 2:15).

"Help me, O Lord," prayed George Matheson, "to unclothe the
tempter, to divest him of his disguise. Much of my service to him
is an unconscious homage to Thee. I mistake the altar on which
I lay my flowers. I have never said, either with heart or lip, 'Let
me build a temple to Satan.' If I loved Satan I should have said
it long ago. But I have loved Thee, and Thee only. I have seen
in the grounds of the tempter things that were 'pleasant to the
eye,' but they were all stolen from Thy garden; their perfume
was the perfume of Eden. Let me regain the simplicity of the
child's vision. Give me the child's uncompromising power of
choice. May Thy day have no cloud; may the tempter's night have
no star." 4

Jesus was made sin on our behalf (II Cor. 5:21) . Sin worked its
will against him unto death. We now walk by the light of that
Cross and face the tempter with open eyes.

The Cross was also the result of loving those who did not want
to be loved. Jesus could have left the Pharisees and the Sadducees
and the chief priests alone. He could have ignored Herod and
Pilate, the Herodians and the Romans. But he didn't. He loved
the world : and the price of love when it persists in the face of

PREACHING THE CRUCIFIED CHRIST 53

rejection is death. Jesus went to Jerusalem to accomplish his
death, says the Gospel record (Matt. 16:21).

We often read in the Gospels that Jesus asked his disciples to
carry their cross and follow him (Matt. 16:24). The Cross is not
the difficulties we meet on the road of our discipleship. It is not
poverty or sickness or antagonism. The Cross is the burden we
bear because in Jesus* name we keep on loving those who do not
want us to love them. On the Cross sin worked its worst and was
worsted, love worked its best and was glorified. In other words,
in Jesus, God dealt both with sin and with the sinner; and there
in Jesus man participates forever both in his victory over sin and
in his pouring out of love.

"He is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are
called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death
has occurred which redeems them from the transgressions under
the first covenant" (Heb. 9:15). "Therefore, since we have con-
fidence to enter the sanctuary ... by the new and living way
which he opened for us ... through his flesh ... let us draw
near with a true heart in full assurance of faith ... for he who
promised is faithful" (Heb. 10:19-23).

One may put the matter thus in order to make plain the Gospel
announcement: Jesus Christ is not a new way or a better way
to salvation as salvation was understood in Old Testament times
or is still understood by the adherents of Islam Jesus is the only
way to a new salvation, man's full heritage which now God
has made available. In Jesus we arrive at the promised land. In
his prayer for the Church, St. Paul is at a loss for words to
describe this inheritance of man in Jesus Christ. "I do not cease,* 1
he says, "to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers,
that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory,

54 THE PREACHER'S TASK AND THE STONE OF STUMBLING

may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowl-
edge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that
you may know what is the hope to which he has called you,
what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and
what is the immeasurable greatness of his power in us who
believe, according to the working of his great might" (Eph.
1:1649).

It is not the logic of the human situation nor of man's religious
experience which compels the preacher to proclaim the necessity
of the Incarnation. Indeed, he does not proclaim it as necessary
on any other ground except that God found it necessary, and
we are now able to see what God accomplished by it. But the
problem for the Muslim does not rest here; he wants to know
whether Incarnation is possible. Can God become man? Can
the word become flesh? The impossibility of this is felt by the
Muslim on two grounds: belief in the incarnation denies God's
unity, and it is also a manifestation of man's arrogance.

Here again the basic problem concerns one's belief about the
nature of human history. In the Fourth Gospel the statement is
made that no one has ascended into heaven but he who de-
scended from heaven, the Son of man (John 3:13); to which
statement some ancient authorities add the words "who is in
heaven." Commenting on these words, Archbishop Temple says :
"Whatever their origin, they represent a most important truth.
The Second Person of the Blessed Trinity was no less in heaven
during the period of the earthly ministry than either before or
after it.'* 5 Jesus was in heaven when he was on earth. He is also,
in all the Gospels and throughout the New Testament, presented
as being on earth now even though he is in heaven. In other
words, earth and heaven, this temporal world and the eternal

PREACHING THE CRUCIFIED CHRIST 55

world are not mutually exclusive realities. There is one world and
one God. When we say Jesus is God incarnate, we mean precisely
that, that God is one and that Jesus is not a second God alongside
another. All the theological controversies in the first four cen-
turies of the Christian era that raged around the doctrine of the
person of Jesus Christ, were concerned with the unity of God.
If Jesus Christ is not real God become real man, then the unity
of God is denied. Jesus Christ is God become man. He was not
created. Jesus Christ is real God become man, he did not become
God by adoption. Jesus Christ is real God become real man. His
humanity was not seeming. There is only one God and one world
and the Incarnation is the proof of both. Indeed, the Muslim
difficulty is not about the unity of God at all, but is the result
of a unitary concept of God's personality. God is not an individ-
ual. It is impossible even to say that God is a person alongside
other persons. The maximum limit to which human language
will stretch in speaking about God is to say that God is personal
and that His nature is not unitary but societary.

Are we only spinning words here and is the Muslim concep-
tion of God's unity simpler and sufficient? It must often seem
like that. But all the mystery and even mystification that sur-
rounds the doctrine of the Trinity is the result of the fact that
Jesus Christ proved in the experience of his disciples that in
him the new age had indeed dawned, God's Kingdom had indeed
come, and God Himself had walked with them.

If we have not entered into our heritage in Jesus Christ, if
we have not received the Holy Spirit of promise, then there
is nothing more to say. As orthodox Christians we may spin
words about the doctrine of the Trinity but they will remain only
words. Where it is a question of one doctrine set over against

56 THE PREACHER'S TASK AND THE STONE OF STUMBLING

another, the Muslim doctrine about the nature of God is clearer
and more convincing. It is Christian experience that contests the
sufficiency o the Muslim teaching about God, and this experi-
ence must lie behind the preacher's words. It is not because man
is arrogant but because God is humble that we are concerned
to say Jesus Christ is God become man. But we cannot say it
with any degree of conviction if we ourselves have not been
humbled by God's humility, if we have not worshiped at the
manger or stood shattered near the Cross.

He left His Father's throne above
So free, so infinite His grace
Emptied Himself of all but love,
And bled for Adam's helpless race.
"Tis mercy all, immense and free;
For, O my God, it found out me! 6

In 1938, at the International Missionary Conference held at
Tambaram, I was secretary of the Commission on the Christian
Faith, with Henry P. Van Dusen as chairman. At the first meet-
ing of the commission, composed largely of doctors of divinity,
we spent two hours in unending discussion which seemed to lead
nowhere. At the end of the session Dr. Van Dusen announced
that when the next session began he would call upon the various
members of the commission to state in three sentences each the
faith by which they lived. The first person to be called upon,
when we gathered again, was Dr. Hendrik Kraemer. I still
remember his three sentences. He said, "I live by faith in the
deeds of God. I feel nothing about them. I stand on them." The
next person to be called was Dr. Walter Horton. He said, "I
can put my faith in one sentence. I live by faith in the objective

PREACHING THE CRUCIFIED CHRIST 57

atonement of Christ." Here we have the heart of the Christian
proclamation. It is not a proclamation about the nature of God.
It is a confession about what God has done for man, and there-
fore for me. A person who is unable to begin with the phrase
"I live by faith in" cannot begin to preach. The indescribable
mystery of the Trinity is something we cannot escape, precisely
because something has happened to us in Jesus Christ which we
cannot deny and which we must make meaningful to others.
"I stand on them" was what Dr* Kraemer said. "The atonement
is objective" was what Dr. Horton said. All preaching begins
at this point, to which the preacher must come himself, caught
and held by God in Jesus Christ. There may be some use in
arguing with the Hindu. There is no use at all in arguing with
a Muslim. He needs demonstration as to what it does mean to
accept Jesus Christ as Incarnate-God.

In a conversation between Dr. E. C. Dewick and Professor
Radhakrishnan the latter said, "You Christians seem to us
Hindus to be rather ordinary people making very extraordinary
claims/' "I replied," says Dr. Dewick, "that we make these claims
not for ourselves but for Jesus Christ" The retort came at once:
"If your Christ has not succeeded in making you into better men
and women, have we any reason to suppose that he would do
more for us if we became Christians?" 7

St. Paul said, "What we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus
Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake"
(II Cor. 4:5). In other words, the preacher does preach himself.
He announces that he has become a servant because of Jesus
Christ. If this announcement is missing either in life or in word,
then the preaching of Jesus Christ is simply the reciting of
empty formula. The only convincing proof of the Incarnation

58 THE PREACHER'S TASK AND THE STONE OF STUMBLING

is the Cross. That is why the Muslim is concerned to deny that
Jesus died on a cross. And the only convincing proof of the
Cross is the lives of those who have been there. "Were you there
when they crucified my Lord? 9 *

Never love nor sorrow was
Like that my Saviour showed:
See Him stretched on yonder Cross,
And crushed beneath our load !
Now discern the Deity,
Now His heavenly birth declare!
Faith cries out: Tis He, 'tis He,
My God, that suffered there! *

Ill

Preaching the Risen Lord

THE BUDDHIST REFUSAL

Some years ago I wrote a conversation as I imagined it to take
place between three students two Buddhists and one Christian
in which was discussed the Buddhist teaching about Nibbana
and its relation to the moral problem as man faces it. Let me
here recall some of that conversation. 1 A lecture had been
delivered on the Buddha Dhamma which these three students
had attended. At the close o the lecture one of the Buddhist
students made this comment. "The lecturer told us," he said,
"that we must pass beyond moral striving to a realization of
Nibbana, remembering that life as we live it is unreal since it
is ignorantly lived. He stressed the fact that we had no self-
identity, and that, therefore, there was no meaning in any achieve-
ment of the self. I ask you," said the student, "does not the
whole thing look like a way of escape from the realities of life's
responsibility and the obligations of morality?'*

The second student, who was also a Buddhist, took up the
first one on that question. *T)id not the lecturer say," he coun-
tered, "that moral living was a necessary discipline, a necessary
preliminary on the way to the complete denial of the self, to

59

60 THE PREACHER'S TASK. AND THE STONE OF STUMBLING

attain which is Nibbana?" To which the first student replied,
"Yes, but if one has to achieve moral living as a preliminary to
attaining Nibbana, one may as well not begin. It is the moral
problem that constitutes life's tragedy, and what is the use o
telling us to solve it so that we may be able to attain something
else? I don't want to solve or attain anything else. I know that
Buddhism teaches that this attitude o mine is simply the result o
impatience and that Nibbana is attained at the end o a long
process, stage by stage, bit by bit, through life after life. But this
too is a way of escape. For it is useless to say that the availability
o infinite time makes a problem solvable when it is the nature o
the problem that defies solution. The moral problem is not that
there is not sufficient time in which I and Society can become
good, but that I and Society cannot become good."

Thereupon the second student answered, <e Now I begin to see
why the Buddhist people have grafted into their religion the
element of devotion to God, often to the Buddha himself con-
ceived of as God. In any case, there is no mistaking the worship
emphasis of Buddhism today. Since the purely ethical formulation
of religion leaves you with a sense of frustration, the people have
found release through worship: for worship means that the
ultimate demand on man is not the demand of goodness but o
devotion/'

The Christian student entered the conversation at this point:
"Is not the tragedy of living," he said^ "accentuated for us be-
cause we try to live a life that is mainly an attempt to meet
immediate problems? We live too completely in one dimen-
sion, the dimension of our own time. Jesus has shown us that
there is a second dimension, the dimension of God's eternal
purpose. For him too, since he was man, there was no escape

PREACHING THE RISEN LORD 61

from the problem of goodness. But he chose to live so completely
in terms of God's eternal will that his life became a complete
refusal to live only in his present. This refusal he made unto
death. When I say, therefore, that Jesus died for me, I mean that
because of his death I am delivered from seeking the good life,
the Hfe of obedience to a moral ideal, a life of despair which
accumulates condemnation unto death; and I am committed to
live a Hfe of devotion to Jesus, the end of which is complete
freedom."

The two Buddhist students seemed rather mystified at this
comment of their fellow student and one of them asked him,
"Have you a clear idea yourself of what you are saying?" To
which the Christian replied, "No, because as I think of the death
of Jesus in relation to his life and my life and the life of the
world, I feel something which I cannot quite express. Perhaps the
simplest way of showing you the direction of my thinking is to
say that when I look at the Cross I no longer have the desire to
make goodness as such my life's aim." The Buddhist students
replied, "It may be that we have misunderstood you, but if we
have understood you at all, it seems to us that, while Buddhism
ultimately sets time and eternity in opposition, and bids us some-
how deny time on behalf of eternity, Jesus bids us live in time as
if we were living in eternity."

The central issue upon which this conversation seeks to focus
attention is the difference between the gospel of God in Jesus
Christ and all "religion." The proclamation of the Christian gos-
pel is concerned with the action and activity of God among men;
the teaching of religion, on the other hand, is concerned with the
action and activity of men as they undertake the task of securing
for themselves the ultimate good, in whatever way that good is

62 THE PREACHER'S TASK AND THE STONE OF STUMBLING

defined or named. THs Is a distinction which the Christian
preacher should never forget. His task is to preach the gospel,
his motive is to help men to respond to that gospel with true
religious obedience. 10 other words, religion is both the preacher's
inevitable concern as well as his necessary temptation.

What is religion and what are its basic activities ? "The practical
test o religion," says Professor Toynbee, "always and everywhere,
is its success or failure in helping human souls to respond to the
challenges of Suffering and Sin." Its concern is to help "human
souls to enter into communion with the presence behind the
phenomena and to bring themselves into harmony with this
Absolute Reality." 2 The practices of religion directed toward this
end can be conveniently grouped into three categories: renuncia-
tion, mysticism, and moralism. Man finds himself bound by the
world and all its concerns. These he must renounce. Man finds
himself limited by his body of flesh and his human associations
and associates. He must transcend these through the practices
of prayer, of meditation, of yoga, of ecstatic trance. Man finds
himself troubled by his moral failings and his moral inadequacies.
From these he must find release through more careful obedience
to the moral law, through the discovery and practice of ways for
securing forgiveness for his lapses, and through obedience to the
ceremonial law and codes of social behavior by which merit can
be acquired to offset the demerit of moral failures.

It is this core of thought and life which is common to all
religions including Christianity, and it is athwart it that there
falls both the promise and the judgment of the gospel. Religion
is like the banyan tree. Its branches grow skyward, but from
these branches roots grow down which seek and find the earth.
These roots are necessary to support the outspread of the tree, but

PREACHING THE RISEN LORD 63

man's religious need is to be delivered from the necessity of these
roots. He needs that gospel which alone can set him free for
God.

In the work of the preacher, no temptation is more common
than the temptation to preach religion rather than the gospel.
Thus, for instance, it is essential that men should be challenged
to renounce the world. Jesus himself preached renunciation. "Do
not lay up for yourselves," he said, "treasures on earth, where
moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, but
lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor
rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For
where your treasure is, there will your heart be also" (Matt. 6:19-
21). But how does one lay up treasure in heaven except by re-
ceiving the gift which came from heaven to men, even the gift of
Jesus Christ? He is man's treasure in heaven and on earth. Be-
cause Jesus is priceless treasure the world fades into insignificance
and irrelevance. And yet not quite, for the world becomes the
place where he must be manifested. Nothing must be allowed to
hide him. In other words, there is no virtue in renouncing the
world except as a means of embracing Christ and being obedient
to him. A soldier, says St. Paul, does not engage in civilian pur-
suits (II Tim. 2:4). The preacher's task is first of all to call upon
men to enlist in the army and then to teach the soldiers who
enlist to maintain the army's discipline for the sake of the task
they have undertaken.

It is perhaps true that the temptation to preach world-renuncia-
tion in itself as good religion is a temptation peculiar to those of
us who are preachers of the gospel in Eastern lands. In our part
of the world "austerity" is an essential ingredient of piety. In a
conversation I had with Billy Graham before his visit to India

64 THE PREACHER'S TASK AND THE STONE OF STUMBLING

kst year, he asked me whether there was anything particular I
would like to say to him which I thought was important for him
to know in view of his intended visit to India. I said, **Yes
there is one thing which you must be aware of. When you are in
India, people will expect to see some sign of austerity in your way
of life as part of your credentials in claiming to be a man of
God.** His answer to that was revealing. "That raises,** he said,
"one of the unresolved problems of my conscience/' He was right.
Indeed, the instinct of our people is right when they insist that
anyone whose life is not marked by "renunciation" has not reaEy
faced up to the demands of God on his lif e. And, always, Chris-
tian discipleship will find this an unresolved problem of con-
science, for "renunciation of the world" is not something done
once and for all. It is involved in our continuing obedience to the
call of Jesus Christ.

But if I understand the problem aright, the present situation
in the United States holds for the Christian preacher a contrary
temptation. This is a land, is it not, in which success is accepted
by many as the criterion of truth? Some streetcar advertisements
at Evanston publicized the validity of prayer because seed plots
that had been prayed over had yielded better results than seed
plots that had not been prayed over. Again, in this land it is pos-
sible to present the work of Jesus Christ on the cross as affording
a foundation for so-called "positive thinking." Even the death of
Jesus Christ is often presented as something one must believe in as
delivering man from his predicament as a sinner: and then, once
that belief is there, one is encouraged to expect as legitimate conse-
quence, or at least as legitimate coexistence, his frigidaire and
automobile and winter residence. The Christian preacher has to
guard himself against both temptations. Neither the joys and sat-

PREACHING THE RISEN LORD 65

isfactions of the world nor the disappointments and hardships of
earthly life are in themselves objects for direct decision by a
Christian, whether positive or negative. The world is the place
where Incarnate-God lived and lives, it is the place where Jesus
was crucified and still suffers, it is the place where the Risen Lord
is continuously at work and where we work with him and wit-
ness to him: all other teaching about the world whether advocat-
ing our enjoyment of it or our renunciation of it must be sub-
servient to these truths of the gospel. Abraham lived as a pilgrim
in the land of promise (Heb. 115). That is always the position
of faith.

A second activity of religion, we said, was the practice of
prayer, of yoga, of meditation, of ecstatic trance. All these are
concerned with the blessedness of being alone with God (the
Buddhist will say: the blessedness simply of being alone, of
being withdrawn into oneself). Certainly, it is an essential part
of the preacher's task to train his people in the art of prayer. But
here again, there lies a temptation and a very insidious one. Let
me give you an extreme example in order to make plain what I
mean. During the days that I was preparing these lectures a
friend of mine who is a pastor in Colombo met me and told me
about something that had happened in his congregation. It was
about people I knew. A man had made love to his friend's wife
and both the man and the woman had run away to Eve together
outside marriage, This man had told my friend, who was their
pastor, that on their first night together both he and the woman
had knelt together and prayed. And he had said, "We never felt
nearer to God." Prayer and devotion can become completely
divorced from the stern realities of discipleship. When Sadhu
Sundar Singh was in Britain on a missionary tour he wrote a

66 THE PREACHER'S TASK AND THE STONE OF STUMBUNG

letter to his friends in India asking for their prayers. 'Tray for
me," he said, "because I am seriously tempted and many times I
have yielded to the temptation. ... I am tempted," he said, "to
spend more time in prayer than I ought to. I often lose count of
time when I am praying because communion with God is so
sweet, and I get late for my meetings where I have to preach/*
We have to go a long way before the sweetness of prayer becomes
for us a temptation, but the issue is still the same. Outside the
context of discipleship the practice of prayer or meditation, and
even the achievement of ecstatic trance, is purely an expression
of religion. "I wish people would be irreligious," said my pastor
friend talking to me about that couple whom I mentioned. Yes,
religion can lead us away from God's purposes for us.

God Himself is our inheritance because we are God's children.
But we are heirs of God only as joint heirs with Jesus Christ.
God is as big as the universenay, bigger but the path to
God is narrow and off the beaten track. Many miss the way,
said Jesus, because the path to the land of inheritance is a turning
off the main road. It is a narrow footpath and seems to lead
nowhere (Matt* 7:13-14). The practices of prayer and mysticism
are as wide as religion. But the gospel announces that we must
come to Bethlehem to meet God, and that we must walk with
Him to Calvary before we inherit. President Eisenhower spoke
at Evanston about the "logistics of faith/* But the question re-
mained, "faith in whom?" Faith is a religious quality of men; it
is the object of faith that matters. The question, when you are
traveling in Europe, is not whether you have francs in your
wallet but whether they are Swiss francs or French francs. It is
always a temptation to the preacher to speak about the practices
o the religious life, forgetting that man has been created capable

PREACHING THE RISEN LORD

67

o these practices, capable of prayer and faith, only in order that
he may truly respond to God's actions on his behalf, God in Jesus
Christ is both the object and the limitation of faith. Our in-
heritance of God is only as joint heirs with Christ. God is un-
divided property and we cannot enter into our inheritance in our
own right. "In the name of Jesus Christ" is both the way to pray
as well as the limitation of prayer.

The third activity of religion which we mentioned was moral-
ism the search for the good life to know it and to live it. It is
of peculiar significance that in Hinduism there is a stage of
religious achievement beyond which "the moral life" ceases to be
a determining concept. In my home town in Jaffna there is a
Hindu yogi who is venerated by the whole community, but when
he desires to speak sternly to anyone he does not hesitate to use
vulgar slang or even obscene language. It is accepted without
question that such language comes from his lips and not from his
soul.

In Buddhism, too, while the moral life is enjoined as an
essential religious discipline at an early stage in the religious life,
it is taught that one must get to the point where it ceases to be
important to ask whether any particular action is in itself right
or wrong. What is important is simply the direction of one's
life, the goal toward which one's life is set.

Does it not seem to you that both Hinduism and Buddhism
are seeking to state in this regard a fundamental truth which
in the Christian gospel comes to clear formulation? The obliga-
tions of the moral kw are subsidiary to life's essential commit-
ment, and life's commitment is dependent on God's demands.
"The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand; re-
pent, and believe in the gospel" (Mark 1:15) "I tell you, among

68 THE PREACHER'S TASK AND THE STONE OF STUMBLING

those born of women none is greater than John; yet he who
Is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he" (Luke
7:28). There is a fundamental difference between seeking to live
righteously and seeking the righteousness of the Kingdom of
God. If the gospel, if the fact that the Kingdom has come, does
not by itself decisively alter the context within which the good
life is to be lived, then we are, to use St. Paul's phrase, still under
the law and not under grace. It is not that we have escaped the
law but that we are committed to a new judgment concerning it.
"So you also, when you have done all that is commanded you,
say, *We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was
our duty' " (Luke 17:10). It is still expected of us that we shall
do all that is commanded, but we are judged not as those who
depend on what they have done but as those who depend on
their Master's mercy and goodness. When St. Paul says that we
are slaves of Christ he means that there are no wages due to us
for our work. It is sin that pays wages; God gives gifts. Christian
piety rightly sings those words with which we are all familiar:

Nothing in my hands I bring,
Simply to thy cross I cling. 3

But anterior to this position of faith is the life of obedience. There
is no meaning in coming with empty hands if we have not
cared first to employ those hands in doing what has been
commanded. To do and then to come empty that is what it
means to live by the gospel of God in Jesus Christ. That is
religion-less Christianity.

There is a story in the Book of Daniel to which my own faith
very often turns for sustenance (Dan. 3:1-18). King Nebuchad-
nezzar had erected a golden image of immense proportions and

PREACHING THE RISEN LORD 69

had decreed that all his subjects should worship it. Shadrach,
Meshach, and Abednego refused. When they were brought to the
king, the king said to them: "Is it true, O Shadrach, Meshach,
and Abednego, that you do not serve my gods or worship the
golden image which I have set up? Now if you are ready . . .
to fall down and worship the image which I have made, well
and good; but if you do not worship, you shall immediately be
cast into a burning fiery furnace; and who is the god that will
deliver you out of my hands?" To which they replied: "O
Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter.
If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from
the burning fiery furnace; and he will deliver us out of your
hand, O king. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will
not serve your gods or worship the golden image which you
have set up." We do not have to think carefully, they say,
before we answer your question, because what we say is the
natural consequence of what we are. We belong to Jehovah.
And we know that He can deliver us. He delivered our fathers
from the hand of Pharaoh. He delivered them from their perils
in the wilderness. He delivered them from the hands of their
enemies in Canaan. We know Him. He can deliver us. More
than that, He will deliver us. That is our faith. But even if He
does not! does that mean that they have doubts that God will
deliver them ? Is their faith insecure ? No. It is not that they have
doubts, but that their faith is independent of religion. At the
point where they say, "But even if He does not," religion has
broken down and they are left alone with God. This position of
faith is possible because they know God. He is the God of all
their yesterdays, so that whatever happens today or tomorrow
God and their faith in God remains secure. Is not this what we

70 THE PREACHER'S TASK. AND THE STONE OF STUMBLING

mean when we speak of the gospel? God Is the God of yesterday.
He has acted on man's behaE The writer of the Epistle to the
Hebrews says to his readers: Do not seek to build your faith
on the practices and beliefs of religion. Jesus Christ does not
change. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. It is good
that the heart is established by grace (Heb. 13:740).

Somehow, the preacher must lead his hearers to this point
where faith begins: where grace is grasped as grace and faith is
able to stand in the strength of grace alone. But should the
preacher forget that that is what he is expected to do, and he can
preach as wonderfully as he is able, he would still not be preach-
ing the gospel, he would be talking about religion instead. Charles
Wesley speaks of the assurance of the forgiveness of sins and the
call to holiness as the starting point of this faith. Let a man be
engaged with Christ in this transaction and he will have found
the certainty of faith. He will then be able to say, however his
faith be challenged, "I can do all things in him who strengthens
me" (Phil. 4:13).

The most impossible of all
Is, that I e'er from sin should cease;
Yet shall it be, I know it shall:
Jesus, look to Thy faithfulness!
If nothing is too hard for Thee,
All things are possible to me.

Though earth and hell the word gainsay,
The word of God can never fail;
The Lamb shall take my sins away,
'Tis certain, though impossible;
The thing impossible shall be,
All things are possible to me. 4

PKEACfflNG THE RISEN LORD

71

The subject of this address is the Buddhist refusal and the
questions it sets for the Christian preacher, and you may have
wondered what the relevance was of all that I have been saying
about religion and religion-less-ness. The inspiration of Buddhism
was the protest of the Buddha against religion, and, even though
today Buddhism is a religion, it holds within it a protest against
religion even as within Christianity there is the protest against
religion which is made by the gospel. The basic conflict between
the Christian faith and the Buddhist teaching is the conflict
between two protests. In Christianity it is God that protests, in
Buddhism the protest is by man.

Let me now turn to the letter which I received from my
Buddhist friend:

My dear Niles,

The subject of this letter has been specifically narrowed down
to the question you asked, "Why a Buddhist cannot accept Chris-
tianity as his religion?" A reply presupposes an adequate knowl-
edge of both religions, and I cannot claim to be sufficiently deeply
versed in Christianity to do justice to this subject. However, with
my general knowledge, I shall proceed to reply, subject to the
proviso that anything I say through ignorance of Christianity will
not be taken amiss as I am doing so at your specific request.

Buddhists are taught that all things are mind-made, that all good
actions and bad actions arise from the mind, and that salvation in
the sense understood by any religion must be sought by oneself
through one's own endeavour. They are also told that they must
accept nothing for granted, that they must think out for themselves
the truth or falsity, reality or non-reality, the good and the bad of all
things. It is the fundamental teaching of Buddhism that everything
arises from a cause and that the law of cause and effect is universal.

72 THE PREACHER'S TASK AND THE STONE OF STUMBLING

They are asked not to accept anything unquestioningly because
authors of religion have preached it. They are asked to reason out
for themselves and to accept what is logically acceptable. In other
words, Buddhists are exhorted by their Religion to be logical and
scientific and to have a clear perception of what they follow.
Buddhism expounds no dogmas that one must blindly believe, no
creeds that one must accept on good faith without reasoning, no
superstitious rites and ceremonies, no meaningless sacrifices and
penances for one's purification. Having thus been given a scientific
outlook, a logical outlook, it is very difficult, nay impossible, for
Buddhists to accept a doctrine which preaches that all good and all
bad flows from an all-powerful and all-merciful Creator.

A Buddhist at once questions the Creator's ail-powerfulness be-
cause He has failed to foresee the coming of sin, the coming of
inequity and injustice. He has failed to prevent such inequity and
injustice and general misery in the world. They question His all-
mercifulness for He has allowed them to sutler in the world and
has ordained that all living beings end up in death. They are,
therefore, unable to accept the theory of an omnipotent and merci-
ful Creator. They see that "Satan" the antithesis of God appears
to be also as powerful and not within the control of the omnipotent
Creator, Here the Buddhist finds himself unable to reconcile the
illogical contradictions.

In Christianity, one prays to God as the Saviour and the dispenser
of all good things in life. In Buddhism, each one is expected,
by his own efforts, to ennoble himself in accordance with the Noble
Eightfold Path. A Buddhist also finds it difficult to reconcile the
Christian concept of having to appease a God by prayers to obtain
one's salvation and, nay, even one's daily bread. Such prayer and de-
pendence also exist among some of the less knowledgeable Buddhists
who carry with them some practices which are of alien origin.
Thus, there are uneducated and ignorant people who believe in the

PREACHING THE RISEN LORD 73

efficacy of Mantras, Huniyams and offerings to various Gods. To
even such people, Christianity offers nothing new as they already
believe that their various practices will result in the desired effects.

As far as the Buddhist intelligentsia are concerned, they find
that the doctrines of Christianity and of Buddhism are divided by
a vast chasm. The former offers the doctrine of dependence on
another as a child depends on the father. The doctrines of
Buddhism, on the other hand, offer full independence and place
full responsibility on each individual to earn his own deserts and
to work out his own salvation. "As you sow, so shall you reap."
That is Buddhism. Karma follows action. No foreign intervention
is possible. To the Buddhist intelligentsia who have realized the
truth of this law of Karma, believing in an unseen power is as
difficult as believing that day shall not follow night.

These, then, are the fundamentals for which a Buddhist cannot
accept Christianity as a true doctrine.

Yours sincerely,

SOMARATNE

You see that in this letter the writer makes three points. First
of all, the Buddhist cannot accept "dogmas," he says. A Buddhist
can accept only the results of reasoned thought. But how do
dogmas arise in Christianity? They arise from the facts of events.
God has acted on man's behalf. When we are dealing with events
o which God is the author, then we can only argue from them
and not to them. The necessity for the actions of God is not
made clear by human reason, but once God has acted the nature
of the consequences of such action for man can be stated. Why
did God create the world? Why did God choose Abraham?
Why was Jesus born o a virgin? Why did Jesus die on the
cross? Why was St. Paul's prayer unanswered when he asked that
his thorn be removed? There is no answer to any one of these

74 THE PREACHER'S TASK AND THE STONE OF STUMBLING

questions or countless others like them. It is so. God did this.
God said this. There is no more that a preacher can say. Ulti-
mately God's word stands alone, unaided by man's wisdom. It has
pleased God, said St. Paul, to save the world by this foolish
method of preaching (I Cor. 1*21).

The second difficulty that rny friend mentions in his letter is
that belief in a good and almighty God leaves one with too many
contradictions as one seeks to interpret human life. He is right,
isn't he? The heart o faith is in these contradictions. God can
and God does not. God must but God will not. Many years ago
when my eldest son was a child of four years and we were living
in Colombo, he left the house one day without our knowledge,
saying that he was going to school. He used to go upstairs, in our
home, and play "school" so that when on that day he came and
told me that he was going to school, I said "yes, you can go"
thinking that he was going upstairs to play. But this time he left
the house and went away. We discovered this only an hour after
he had gone. We searched for him everywhere without success.
If he had got on to the main road, anything could have happened
to him. When, after an hour's fruitless search in homes of friends
and relations, we finally realized that he was lost, I still remem-
ber vividly the first thought which gripped my mind. I found my-
self saying to myself over and over again whatever happens,
God is good. My son finally came back home in the company of
a policeman. Later that night as I was talking to my wife I told
her about my experience and she said to me, "The words I was
repeating to myself were: since God is good, nothing will hap-
pen. 9 * Religion-less faith is involved in this contradiction. "What-
ever happens, God is good." "Since God is good, nothing wiU
happen." It is in this kind of contradiction that it is born. The

PREACHING THE RISEN LORD 75

Buddhist is asking for explanations precisely about the point
where man must stand alone with God. At that point explana-
tions are an irrelevance. Faith declares that "neither death, nor
life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things
to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in
all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in
Christ Jesus our Lord" (Rom. 8:38-39).

The third point which my friend makes in his letter is that
man is his own savior. He earns his own deserts. In other words,
he is still under law.

... all must give

For all things done amiss or wrongfully.
Alone, each for himself, reckoning with

that

The fixed arithmic of the universe,
Which meteth good for good and ill for ill,
Measure for measure, unto deeds, words,

thoughts ;

Watchful, aware, implacable, unmoved;
Making all futures fruits of all the pasts. 5

It is at this point that one sees clearly the nature of the Buddhist
protest against religion. Man is bound to his own actions, and
all attempts to mitigate man's condition by various forms of
religious practices and devotion are in the last analysis useless.
Religion proclaims that there is grace: but this grace which re-
ligion proclaims is too cheap. Indeed, it is no grace. Cheap grace
is no grace at alL The grace which the Christian gospel pro-
claims, however, is the grace of God in Jesus Christ. It cost God
an incarnation and a crucifixion to be gracious to man. But more
than that, it cost a resurrection to remain gracious. We see clearly

76 THE PREACHER'S TASK AND THE STONE OF STUMBLING

the humiliation which God had to accept in order to become man.
We can realize the suffering and sorrow that Incarnate-God had
to endure in order to love man and die at his hands. But we forget
very often what it meant to God to raise Jesus Christ from the
dead and hand him over to men again to do with him as they
would. The Resurrection proclaims that Jesus Christ is still at
man's mercy because he is still man among men God with us
and at our disposal "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?" is
the cry of Jesus Christ the Risen Lord.

The good news of grace that the Christian preacher proclaims
is the good news that Jesus Christ is risen from the dead. It is the
Risen Christ, each man's eternal contemporary, who is declared
to be gracious. He is at work with men and with human history
as a whole. As the writer to the Hebrews puts it, he is able for
all time to save^ since he always lives (Heb. 7:25). In his Gilford
lectures, Professor Toynbee came to the following conclusion
about the next lesson which Christianity must learn as it seeks
to perform its task in the world today. Here is what he said: "In
a chapter of the World's history in which the adherents of the
living higher religions seem likely to enter into much more
intimate relations with one another than ever before, the spirit
of the Indian religions, blowing where it listeth, may perhaps help
to winnow a traditional Pharisaism out of Muslim, Christian,
and Jewish hearts. But the help that God gives is given by Him
to those who help themselves; and the spiritual struggle in the
more exclusive-minded Judaic half of the World to cure our-
selves of our family infirmity seems likely to be the most crucial
episode in the next chapter of the history of Mankind." 6 "We
believe that our own religion is the way and the truth, and this
belief may be justified, as far as it goes. But it does not go very

PREACHING THE RISEN LORD 77

far; for we do not know either the whole truth or nothing but
the truth. 'We know in part' and Ve see through a glass, darkly.'
When the light has shone out into the darkness, the Universe
still remains a mystery. 'The heart o so great a mystery cannot
ever be reached by following one road only.' " 7 That is finely said.
But, whereas the religions of men will establish new relationships
to one another and adopt fresh attitudes toward one another as
the movements of history make them inseparable neighbors, there
lies a fact at the edge of history which questions the functions of
religion itself. If Jesus Christ is indeed risen from the dead, then
there is an activity in the world which is his activity and with
which the historian must reckon. It is not surprising that Pro-
fessor Toynbee misquotes the gospel, when he says that "we
believe that our own religion is the way and the truth." That is
just what we should not believe. The way and the truth is Jesus
Christ. Christianity needs to learn not only the lesson of
neighborliness with respect to other religions, it also needs to
learn the lesson of maintaining at the center of its own life that
gospel of grace which is the judgment on all religions.

Religion can be a lamp to our feet. It shows us the next step.
But how easy it is to miss one's way even with that lamp. Every
step can be securely taken and yet that journey in the dark may
lead nowhere. A traveler in the dark needs not only a lamp to his
feet but also a light on his way. How often on a dark and stormy
night, picking one's way through a field with the aid of a lantern,
one has prayed that there may come a flash of Hghtning which
will show where one is going. "I am the way," said Jesus Christ.
The preacher's task is to make that way known.

When the Buddha denied the relevance if not the existence of
God, he did so because in the Hinduism which he found all

78 THE PREACHER'S TASK AND THE STONE OF STUMBLING

around him God was the object of man's religious activity. This
activity, together with the God who was its object, he swept away
as completely useless because it seemed to him that effective
grace could not be a consequence of any action by man. He was
right. Man cannot make God gracious by anything he does. Hav-
ing thus swept God out of man's life, there was nothing more to
say to man except that as he sowed so would he reap. The Chris-
tian gospel, on the other hand, declares not that God is the ob-
ject of man's religious activity but that man is the object of God's
gracious action. As God sows, so does He reap. The law of karma
applies not only to man but also to God. God has sown the life
of His Son, and man is the harvest that God must reap. Jesus
said that "unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it
remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit" (John 12:24).
The grace of God is costly grace because it is independent of
man's religious life. It flows from God's nature. It is the fact of
Jesus with man all the way even unto this end. This grace it is
the preacher's task to proclaim. How easily the Christian preacher
is tempted to make religion a condition of grace, and how good
it is that the Buddhist protests against either that kind of religion
or that kind of grace!

Let me close quoting Charles Wesley again, from a poem in
which there is an almost perfect description of the cost of grace
and the contest of faith:

Come, O Thou Traveller unknown,
Whom still I hold, but cannot see!
My company before is gone,
And I am left alone with Thee;
With Thee all night I mean to stay,
And wrestle till the break of day.

PREACHING THE RISEN LORD

79

In vain Thou struggles! to get free ;
I never will unloose my hold !
Art Thou the Man that died for me?
The secret of Thy love unfold:
Wrestling, I will not let Thee go,
Till I Thy name, Thy nature know,

My prayer hath power with God; the grace
Unspeakable I now receive;
Through faith I see Thee face to face,
I see Thee face to face, and live !
In vain I have not wept and strove:
Thy nature and Thy name is Love.

Contented now upon my thigh
I halt, till life's short journey end;
All helplessness, all weakness, I
On Thee alone for strength depend ;
Nor have I power from Thee to move:
Thy nature and Thy name is Love. 8

IV
When the Gospel Is Proclaimed

In our thinking so far we have sought to understand the
nature of the preacher's task and the content of the gospel he
must proclaim; and we have tried to do this by looking at both
these questions in the light of the kind of reaction which the
proclamation of the gospel evokes in the hearts and minds of
those who belong to other faiths. This method of approach has
provided us with insights which are of permanent value for the
preacher, whether his work lies among adherents of other faiths
or not. After all, unbelief and other-belief always belong to any
situation to which the gospel Is addressed. I suggest that, in this
address, we look at the preacher's task in the light of a question
that has a long history of discussion behind it the question of
the relation between Christianity and other religions. This is a
question of permanent theological significance for anyone who
seeks to make his preaching effective evangelism.

We have already said that this is a most important discussion
with a long history, and yet in spite of this subject being so
essential to an understanding of the Church's task, the discussion
of it has resulted in so many and so varied answers jfaat it may be

WHEN THE GOSPEL IS PROCLAIMED 81

useful in the first place to reflect on the way the discussion itself
has been conducted. Let us summarize the results of the discus-
sion so far.

A SUMMARY OF ANSWERS GIVEN

There have been five distinct points of view on this subject
which have found vigorous expression in recent theological
debate.

1. It has been held that the attitude of Christian evan-
gelism should be that Christianity must supplant the other re-
ligions because they are of purely human origin. The primary
evangelistic method of those who advocate this attitude is that
of polemic.

An important variant of this attitude and consequent method is
that the Christian witness does not need to and, indeed, cannot
express a judgment on other religions. Christianity and these
religions are of two different kinds. So, what is permissible and
effective is to set Christianity over against other religions, making
the demand that those of other religions give them up and em-
brace Christianity instead. To challenge those of other faiths
with a presentation of the Christian gospel is the one responsibility
of the evangelist.

2. A second point of view which is urged is that Christianity
is the fulfillment of other religions. There is in these religions a
real yearning for God which is itself a partial response to His
approach, and this yearning is truly met by Christ. Indeed, since
this yearning for God in these religions is not only something in-
herent in the religious consciousness but is also the inspiration of
the very teachings of these religions, these teachings find their full

82 THE PREACHER'S TASK AND THE STONE OF STUMBLING

meaning and significance and are truly construed as pointers to
Jesus Christ.

Our little systems have their day:
They have their day and cease to be:
They are but broken lights of Thee,
And Thou, O Lord, art more than they. 1

The method of approach which this attitude would support is
one grounded in the study of comparative religion. It is a method
which seeks to isolate truths from a whole body of belief and
show that these truths point to the truth in Jesus Christ.

3. A third attitude of Christian witness which is set forward
is that there is in all religions the possibility of "faith" between
God and man a possibility which is realized by many persons
yet that in Christianity this possibility has become a free gift
to all men. In Jesus, a transformation of man's religious situation
has taken place. Let a man meet Jesus, and Jesus becomes indis-
pensable to him.

Those who share this attitude would insist that the primary
method which Christian witness must follow is the method of
conversation. The man who has "faith" but who is not a Chris-
tian has something to say which the Christian must listen to, not
only in order to understand that "faith" but also to acknowledge
it. The Christian gospel must then be addressed to that faith in
order that that faith may be made secure in the gospel.

4. A fourth position which is maintained is that in Jesus
all religions are brought to judgment, and that he remains the
judge of all religions including Christianity. Religion is man's
response to God's action on man's behalf. The only way of re-
ceiving the gospel of Jesus Christ, however, is by radical repent-

WHEN THE GOSPEL IS PROCLAIMED 83

ance, for there is no theological continuity between the religious
life and the life of faith, which is rooted in the gospel

The consequence of this attitude in evangelistic practice and
preaching is a dialectic approach to other religions. On the one
hand, the messenger of the gospel stands alongside his hearers
Christianity and other religions being set side by side; and, on
the other hand, he stands face to face with Ms hearers as the
emissary of the gospel to them. The Christian is in the world, the
gospel is over against it.

5. A fifth point of view would hold that the motive of Chris-
tian witness should be not one of seeking to make Christians out
of adherents of other religions, but of so presenting Jesus Christ
to them that he himself will become for them the point of
reconception with respect to their own religions. Thus, it is held,
in course of time there will emerge a new religion in which all
religions, including Christianity, will be comprehended.

In this process Christianity has to give as well as to receive, so
that the true method of approach is that of co-operation. Wor-
shiping and working together, Christians and those who are not
Christians will help one another to a fuller understanding and a
more comprehensive acceptance of all that it means when one
says "I believe in God."

Each sees one colour of Thy rainbow-light,
Each looks upon one tint and calls it heaven;
Than art the fulness of our partial sight;
We are not perfect till we find the seven. 2

The wide difference in point of view and conviction which
the above summary must disclose naturally raises the question
as to whether those who partake in this discussion are sufficiently

84 THE PREACHER'S TASK AND THE STONE OF STUMBLING

agreed on what the discussion should be about or on the frame
of thought within which the debate should take place. It is
to this question that we shall now address ourselves, in the hope
that a reflection on the general terms of the discussion may un-
cover where some of the inherent difficulties lie, and also shed
light on why Christians, who are equally committed to the
Church's task of proclaiming the gospel, find themselves in such
sharp disagreement.

THE CHRISTIAN COMPONENT IN THE DISCUSSION

At the outset we roughly described the relation which is
being discussed as that between "Christianity and other religions";
but this rough description is not enough. It is essential to define
more closely the two components or factors the relation between
which is the subject of examination. First of all, then, what is the
Christian factor? Is it the Christian Faith, or the Christian Re-
ligion, that is, Christianity, or the Christian Church or the Chris-
tian Gospel? If it is granted that the uniqueness which is
affirmed about the Christian factor lies in Jesus Christ himself,
who he is, what he has done, and what he is continuing to do,
then we have a criterion with which to judge the adequacy and
correctness of the term that we use.

If we speak about the Christian Faith, we are speaking about
the body of Christian doctrine, belief, and practice. Obviously,
this includes and is dependent on our affirmation about Jesus
Christ; but it is our faith, that is, the faith as formulated by and
enshrined within the life of the Church. This means that the
term "Christian Faith" is a term which is centripetal by nature
and, therefore, will cause confusion if the attempt is made to
establish a relation between it and the world outside it.

WHEN THE GOSPEL IS PROCLAIMED 85

If we speak about the Christian Religion, that is, Christianity,
we are speaking about a historical phenomenon. We are speak-
ing, on the one hand, about a body of people who through the
centuries have maintained an identifiable continuity and, on the
other hand, about their faith and life. This life has been lived
in the world and has been subject to the influences and pressures
of the world, so that in smaller or greater measure at different
times of its history it has been conditioned by the world. In other
words, the term "Christianity" partakes so much of "the world"
that it is too inclusive a term to use in this discussion.

If we speak about the Christian Church, we are speaking about
the body which professes the Christian Faith and whose life
constitutes the stream which is Christianity. This church lives in
the world and is related to it, but this relationship is not the re-
lationship of two things which exist side by side so that an ob-
jective definition or description can be given of the relation
between them. Rather, it is part of the nature of the Church to
relate itself to the world in a particular way, so that if we take
"the Christian Church" as the first term in our discussion we
shall be led not so much to discuss the relation between the
Church and something else as to discuss the nature of the Church
itself in its relationships. In other words, to use the term "the
Christian Church" for one component in this discussion is to
destroy the integrity of the other component

If we speak about the Christian Gospel, the emphasis falls on
that action of God in Jesus Christ which has caused the Church,
and set it in the world, and given to it its mission. The term
"the Christian Gospel" emphasizes the fact that the relation
around which the discussion centers is a relation which is caused
by the gospel itself when it is addressed to all those who are

86 THE PREACHER'S TASK AND THE STONE OF STUMBLING

claimed by It. Thus, for example, when we speak about "the rela-
tion between the Christian Gospel and Hinduism" we are actually
speaking about "the relation caused by the Christian Gospel
between itself, and Hinduism when it is proclaimed."

In order to designate the Christian component in this discus-
sion, therefore, the term "the Christian Gospel" or "the Christian
Message" is the one which seems to light up the true situation.
The word "message" focuses attention on the gospel-proclaimed.
It also immediately makes clear that the discussion is not to be
in the area of comparative religion or comparative religious
psychology. Rather, it shows that it is to be in the area of evan-
gelism and evangelistic responsibility. In other words, we may
not conduct the discussion by first defining and describing each
component term and then seeking to define or describe the rela-
tion between them. We must, rather, seek to find out directly
how the relation itself is set up and why; and what, therefore, its
nature is.

The term "the Christian Message" also commends itself be-
cause it necessarily draws attention to the other terms which we
have discussed. It affirms:

(i) that there is a Message the gospel that in Jesus Christ
God has acted on man's behalf, and demands the response of
all men;

(ii) that there is a Messenger the Church, which the gospel
brings into being, and the Body within which the gospel is
continuously experienced;

(iii) that there is a Story the story of the Christian religion,
which is the story of the Church's witness to and life in the
gospel;

WHEN THE GOSPEL IS PROCLAIAfED

87

(iv) and that there is a Faith the normative testimony by
the historical Church to the eternal gospel.

All this means that the discussion is not about the relation
between the religion, or the religious life, of Christians and that
of those who are not Christians; nor is it about the relation
between the religious beliefs of Christians and the beliefs of those
who are not Christians; rather, it is about the operation of the
gospel itself among those who are Christians and among those
who are not. It is when the gospel is preached that the relation
which we are seeking to understand is set up. Indeed, that is why
this subject is so immediately relevant to a consideration of the
preacher's task. Something happens when the gospel is pro-
claimed, and an understanding of what happens is essential for
an understanding of the nature of the proclamation.

THE NON-CHBISTTAN COMPONENT IN THE DISCUSSION

If, then, our submission is right, that the subject of our discus-
sion is the relation which is created when the gospel is proclaimed,
the simplest way of defining the non-Christian component or
factor in our discussion is to ask, What is the object to which
the gospel is addressed? The answer surely is "the world." It is
the world which God loved and which Jesus died to save; it is
the world over which he rules and which, at the end, he will
judge. This world, nevertheless, has not fully accepted his rule
nor does it rejoice in it. Countless millions of people in this
world do not yet know Jesus as their Saviour. To this world the
gospel is addressed.

But this world li ves, and in its life exhibits much truth, beauty,
and goodness; in it is found faith toward God and love toward

88 THE PREACHER'S TASK AND THE STONE OF STUMBLING

man; it is very much a religious world. It is also a world which
will not, and thinks that it need not, accept the gospel of God
in Jesus Christ. Indeed, it is this contrariness in the nature of the
world which constitutes the chief problem in our discussion. Be-
cause of it there is created the double relation both of judgment
and of kinship which the Christian message establishes between
itself and its addressee. Because of it there arises also the gospel's
universal demand for repentance. All must repent and no one is
exempted. Whether Nicodemus (John 3:1-15) or Mary of Mag-
dala (Luke 8 2, Luke 736-48), whether religious teacher or way-
side sinner, both need repentance and both can repent. Whether
Saul of Tarsus (Acts 9) or Elymas the sorcerer (Acts 13:842),
servant of God or servant of the devil, both must become blind
before they can see. How important it is, therefore, so to define
the non-Christian component in our discussion that we make clear
its double nature both as being open to and contrary to the
Christian message.

In the history of the discussion we are speaking about, the
non-Christian factor has been variously defined as non-Christian
faith, non-Christian religions, a non-Christian world.

When Jesus said of the Roman centurion, "Truly, I say to you,
not even in Israel have I found such faith" (Matt. 8:10), he
was speaking about a fact to which Christians who have lived
with followers of other religions can bear testimony. Again and
again, when the gospel is proclaimed, it is proclaimed to persons
who already have this kind of faith, so that it is a legitimate and
essential question to ask "What relation does the gospel, when it
is proclaimed, establish between itself and such faith?" But it
would be foolish to assume that the answer to this question holds
the key to an understanding of the relation between the Christian

WHEN THE GOSPEL IS PROCLAIMED 89

gospel and the non-Christian world, for the nature of the non-
Christian world is not determined by the presence in it of per-
sons of faith; it is determined rather by those complete systems of
life and belief which are able to sustain themselves without ac-
cepting the gospel of Jesus Christ and, therefore, cannot accept
it without being subverted by it.

It is these complete systems of life and belief which we speak
about when we speak about non-Christian religions. But the
gospel is not addressed to these religions either; it is addressed to
the world of whose life and thought these religions are a part.
The world is made up of the world of nature and of persons in
all their manifold relationships. This world the gospel claims
for itself and calls to repentance. Thus, our discussion cannot be
about the Christian gospel and non-Christian religions; it has to
be about the Christian message in a non-Christian world. The
importance, however, of remembering the part these religious
systems pky in the world cannot be overstressed. From it arises
the pressing need to study each of these religious traditions and
the specific forms of faith which condition each man's response
to the gospeL

And yet, the basic truth remains that it is man whom the gospel
addresses. William Ernest Hocking is reported as having asked
C. F. Andrews, "How do you preach the gospel to a Hindu?" to
which Andrews replied, "I don't. I preach the gospel to a man."
That is a profound answer. The Christian message is not ad-
dressed to other religions, it is not about other religions: the
Christian message is about the world. It tells the world a truth
about itself God loved it and loves it still; and, in telling that
truth, the gospel bears witness to a relation between itself and the
world. It is this relation which is the subject of our discussion.

90 THE PREACHER'S TASK AND THE STONE OF STUMBLING

Also, it is well to remember that the world is non-Christian
only in a historical sense. It is already in God's purpose a world
for which Jesus died and over which he rales. It is true that
there are many who have not accepted him as their Lord and
Saviour, and refuse so to accept him still; but even they are
within the rule and saving work of Christ. In Charles Wesley's
words:

The world He suffered to redeem ;
For all He hath the atonement made ;
For those that will not come to Him

The ransom of His life was paid. 3

Thus, in the final analysis, the "relation" which we are seeking
to understand is a relation established by Jesus himself. There is
the gospel to be proclaimed and there are those whom the gospel
claims; and from both these facts arises the question which we
seek to answer: "What is the nature of the existence of the Chris-
tian message in a non-Christian world?"

WHEN THE GOSPEL is PROCLAIMED

The commission under which the Church acts when it pro-
claims the gospel is summed up in the words with which St.
Matthew's Gospel closes: "All authority in heaven and on earth
has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all
nations" (Matt. 28:18-19). Those to whom the Church is sent
with its message are already those over whom Jesus has been set
as Lord. They are his. They are those other sheep about whom
he spoke when he said, "I have other sheep, that are not of this

WHEN THE GOSPEL IS PROCLAIMED 91

fold; I must bring them also" (John 10:16). They are his sheep.
He already has them. He must bring them into his fold. When
the gospel is proclaimed, it is to this activity of the Christ that
that proclamation bears witness, and it is with this activity that
it seeks to co-operate.

God is busy with man. He made man in His own image* He
made man in such a way that man Eves by "imaging" God. This
also means, therefore, that God is always "toward" man, seeking
to evoke man's glad response. It is not necessary for us to define
or describe the ways in which God's busy-ness with man has
been exercised, it is enough to know that that busy-ness has
been there. The story of the Old Testament is abundant proof
that God was busy all the time not only with Israel but with all
peoples. When the gospel declares that God loved the world, it
is this truth that it is declaring. The gospel is for all men with
each of whom and all of whom God is still busy. His Christ is
seeking them to bring them into his fold. The evangelist does
not grasp the true inwardness of his work where he does not see
that God is previous to him in the life of the person whom he is
seeking to win for the gospel, and also previous to him in what-
ever area of life he is seeking to make the gospel effective.

What happens, then, when the gospel is proclaimed? That is
the question for which we are seeking an answer, an answer
which we may now proceed to outline.

The activity of God in the world. His busy-ness,, can be set out
within four different frames of thought,

L There is God in His activity to win men to live in fellow-
ship with Him.

2. There is God in His activity to reveal to men His true
nature and purpose.

92 THE PREACHER'S TASK AND THE STONE OF STUMBLING

3. There is God in His activity to create for Himself a people
who will be His instrument in the world.

4. And there is God in His activity to bring to pass His
kingdom into which will be gathered all the treasures of the
nations.

It is on this fourfold activity of God that the Church's com-
mission to proclaim the gospel depends. We preach the gospel
not simply as those under command to do so but as those who,
being in Christ, find ourselves involved and implicated in his
continuing ministry to and in the world. God is at work and we
work with Him, and the consequence of what we do is sub-
ordinate to the consequence of what He does. Our work is an
offering to Him, His work is what fulfills His purposes.

GOD IN His ACTIVITY OF SALVATION

Let us look, then, at the first activity of God which we men-
tioned His activity to win men to live in fellowship with Him.
Here the basic truth which we must affirm at the outset is one
we have mentioned already, the truth that God is always busy
with every man, because each man is made in God's image.
While it is true that men call themselves Hindus or Muslims or
Buddhists or Christians and that each of these religions has
identifiable and defined beliefs, it is nevertheless also true that
the religion of one man is not exactly like the religion of another
man. There is a true sense in which each man's religion can be
more or can be less than his religious system. Whether men are
engaged in flight from God or search for God or acceptance of
God (and all men are involved in all these three attitudes at the
same time), they are, in all these things, reacting to the action
of God upon them in His work of salvation. No man's religion

WHEN THE GOSPEL IS PROCLAIMED

93

and no religious system is purely a product of man. To say that
they are is to deny that man is made in God's image.

It is true that God's image in man has been distorted by sin,
but the image is still there. A mirror may be a broken mirror,
but as long as one stands in front of the mirror it will reflect
one's image a broken and distorted image, certainly; but one's
image nevertheless. Our reflection of God's image is there as
long as God has not forsaken us. We can only break the mirror.
We cannot get rid of God's busy-ness with us.

The Incarnation is the climax and fulfillment of this con-
tinued busy-ness of God with man. Jesus is not merely the ful-
fillment of God's work with Israel, he is the fulfillment of God's
work with humanity. The Word became flesh. God became man.
Jesus is more than Jew. So, with respect to Christ, too, our affirma-
tion has to be a universal affirmation. He became a man like all
men. He is busy with all men. He loves all men. He died for all
men. He seeks all men. He rules over all men. He is judge of all
men. Hence the Christian message is proclaimed to all men. "God
so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that who-
ever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life"
(John 3:16).

But what of those who already have "faith" to whom this
declaration is made? Are there not those who have not con-
sciously accepted God in Christ, but who nevertheless in some
measure respond truly to God's action on them? The answer must
be "yes."

But it is necessary to go on and affirm that even they are in
need of the challenge of the gospel and that their faith can be
both a preparation and a hindrance to finding faith in Jesus
Christ. The relation between Christian faith and non-Christian

94 THE PREACHER'S TASK AND THE STONE OF STUMBLING

faith (both words being used in the singular) is not a relation
that can be systematized. The work of the Holy Spirit in each
soul cannot be described in the same way. There are those who,
because of their previous faith, find themselves prepared to
accept the Lordship of Jesus Christ. They also find that, once they
have accepted his Lordship, their previous faith undergoes a
radical transformation. There are others who, because of their
faith, find themselves hindered from accepting the Lordship of
Jesus Christ, but who find that, once the Holy Spirit has led them
to accept Christ's Lordship, then their original faith is not some-
thing they need to throw away. It becomes part of the soil in
which their faith in Christ grows and blossoms.

In other words, the actual living process of men finding faith
in Jesus Christ is not a process that can be described according to
one pattern. The attempt to do this is, very often, simply the
result of those who are already Christians attempting to find out
a way in which, when they study other religions, the knowledge
of these religions relates itself to their Christian faith. Some Chris-
tians find that they can move from their Christian faith to an
understanding of other religions without being conscious of a
break in thought, there are others who find themselves unable to
avoid this break, while there are still others who find it com-
pletely impossible to establish any relation between their Chris-
tian faith and their understanding of other religions. May it not
be that the whole discussion about the relationship between
Christianity and other religions has been vitiated by the fact that
we have been talking not so much about what happens when
the Christian gospel is proclaimed to adherents of other religions
as about what happens when we who are of the Christian faith
study other religions?

WHEN THE GOSPEL IS PROCLAIMED

95

GOD IN His ACTIVITY OF REVELATION

In speaking about God in His activity of salvation, we spoke
primarily of the effect of that activity on all men. But there is
also a central story of this activity. He who had not left himself
without witness among any people at any time, nevertheless
made this witness to Himself the central concern of His dealings
with a particular people. He made the Jews the bearers of His
revelation. The demand of God on the Jewish people was that
they should be faithful to Him. In the indictment of the nations
which Amos drew up it was only with respect to Judah and
Israel that the judgment turned on what God had done for
them. The other nations were to be punished because their
wrongdoing was a denial of their belonging to God (Amos
1-2) . The words in which Isaiah accused his people of infidelity
stated the central concern of God in His activity of revelation.
"The ox knows its owner, and the ass its master's crib; but
Israel does not know, my people does not understand* " (Isa. 1 :3) .

This activity of God in revelation which we trace through the
Bible story is certainly also His activity in salvation, but here
I am distinguishing it as revelation because its intention was
not only to save but also to raise a people who would be the
messengers of this salvation. They would know God as Saviour.
They would recognize His saving works. They would proclaim
this good news of God's salvation. Through His dealings with
the Jews, it was all mankind that God sought to save, and it was
for this purpose that He demanded of the Jews that they under-
stand and acknowledge Him as Saviour and themselves as His
people. The sorrows that fell upon them were for the healing

96 THE PREACHER'S TASK AND THE STONE OF STUMBLING

of the nations (Rev. 22:2) ; the light lit upon Zion was in order
that the nations might come to it (Rev. 21:23-26).

This revelation reached its fulfillment in Jesus Christ. "In
many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the
prophets; but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son"
(Heb. 1:1-2). The story of revelation finds its culmination in
Jesus, and through Jesus it becomes effective and meaningful for
all men. The purpose of God in His dealings with the Jews is
completed in Jesus, who was a Jew, so that by the obedi-
ence of Jesus that purpose proceeds to its realization in the
life of all mankind.

The instrument in history by which this fulfillment of God's
revelation in Jesus Christ is witnessed to in the world is the
Church. The Church is created by that revelation; its life
is what response to that revelation makes possible. (The Church is
continuous with Israel, it is the object and bearer of God's revela-
tion.) Thus arises the demand of the gospel that men accept it
and become witnesses to it. It was this demand that the early
Church made of the Jews, and if the demand was made of the
Jews, how much more decisively it is made of the Gentiles.

In other words, the form in which the question is put to men
by God's activity in revelation is determined by the fact that
God not only seeks to save but also seeks participants in His
work of salvation. What is set before men is a demand made
within the here and now of their earthly life. What must they
do who, whatever their previous faith, find faith in Jesus Christ?
The answer is that they must repent and be baptized. They must
become members of the Christian community. Baptism is the
sign of the essential discontinuity between life outside conscious
acceptance of Jesus as Lord and inside his Body which is the

WHEN THE GOSPEL IS PROCLAIMED 97

Church. Outside Jesus they may have been religious men, but
now they have become something quite different. They have
become messengers of the gospel Their essential occupation has
changed.

There has been in India, for some time now, a group that calls
itself "the fellowship of the friends of Jesus." It is a group that
has sought to express its faith in Jesus Christ without breaking
away from the Hindu community. Some of its members, like the
late Mr. O. Kandasamy Chetty, have borne significant witness to
Jesus Christ as Lord. But the effect of this group has been to blur
the nature of the demand which Jesus makes on men. God in His
activity of revelation is asking for a people who wiU be His, who
will come out of the world and be separate, who will be the
sign and symbol and evidence of what God has done for man
in Jesus Christ. Any attempt to treat the story of Jesus simply
as a part of the general story of how God has been busy with
men results in making that story pointless. The significance of
Jesus is bound up with his claim that all men must answer the
question as to who he is.

The Christian message in a non-Christian world, therefore,
not only poses the problem of man's response to God's will to
redeem him, it also presents the issue of man's response to God*s
desire to use him. In Jesus, God's plan and purpose for the world
have been revealed, and God is asking for fellow workers with
Jesus. The first qualification of such a worker is that he must
be known as belonging to Jesus Christ and to no one else. It is an
inescapable part of the task of the preacher to make this call for
fellow workers known and have it accepted.

Thus, while a consideration of the questions raised by the
nature of God's activity in salvation leads to answers which can-

THE PREACHERS TASK AND THE STONE OF STUMBLING

not be tied up into neat formulae, a consideration of the questions
raised by the nature of God's activity in revelation demands a.
simple and unequivocal answer. "The times of ignorance God
overlooked, but now lie commands all men everywhere to repent,
because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in
righteousness by a man whom he has appointed" (Acts 17:30-31).

GOD IN His Acnvrry OF MISSION

It is already evident that the connection between God in His
activity of salvation and God in His activity of revelation lies in
the fact that God has raised up for Himself a people whose pri-
mary obligation is their mission to the world. One of the essential
distinctions between the Christian faith and other faiths is that
the Christian faith can be proclaimed. The other faiths can only
be taught. The Christian evangelist announces that something
has happened which is of both immediate and ultimate signifi-
cance for each man and aJl men. The adherents of other religions,
on the other hand, expound the teachings of their own religions
as the true interpretation of the meaning and responsibilities of
life. The Christian evangelist is primarily concerned with evoking
obedience to Jesus Christ. The teachers of other religions are con-
cerned with winning acceptance for the truths they teach.

This fact that the Christian faith is something to be proclaimed
is so important that I would like to state its significance also in
another way. So often we have heard Christians say, for instance,
"The Hindus believe in rebirth, Christians believe in the resur-
rection," and this is said as if what each believes is what will
happen to him. The Christian faith proclaims certain things as
true and as true independently of human belief in them. "J esus

WHEN THE GOSPEL IS PROCLAIMED 99

is man's Saviour" is the core of the preacher's proclamation and
it remains proclamation. It is announced. It is true in itself. It is
a truth about him.

At first we spoke about the relation between Christian and
non-Christian faith in terms of God in His activity o salvation,
and we saw that that relation had to be expressed dialecticaUy
in terms of continuity and of discontinuity. Then we spoke about
the relation between the Christian and non-Christian communi-
ties in terms of God in His activity of revelation, and we saw
that that relation had to be expressed in terms of the distinctive-
ness and newness of the Christian community as the bearer of
God's revelation. Now we speak of the relation between the
message which the Christian community proclaims and the be-
liefs which the others hold. Here we see that there is true and
essential discontinuity. The Christian message cannot be grafted
upon other beliefs or added to them. There is only one way in
which the Christian message can be accepted and that is by a
radical conversion to it, so radical that the New Testament speaks
of it as a new birth (John 33; I Pet. 13), the coming into being
of a new creation (II Cor, 5:17), a dying and a living again
(Rom. 6:5-8). The mission of the Church and the task of the
preacher are directed to this end. There is no connection between
one's obedience to Jesus Christ and any other attitude of mind or
spirit which preceded it. Psychologically, of course, there is
always a connection but religiously the man in Christ is a new
man.

When Nicodemus came to Jesus he began his conversation
with the acknowledgment that Jesus came from God* No one
can look at the things you are doing, he said, without seeing that
God is with you. The answer of Jesus was to deny that Nico-

100 THE PREACHER'S TASK AND THE STONE OF STUMBLING

demus even saw what was happening. No one, says Jesus, can see
the Kingdom of God unless he is bom again. For the only way
to see is to see from within; and only they are within who have
been born of water and of the Spirit. John baptized with water
demanding repentance, Jesus baptized with the Spirit demanding
obedience; Nlcodemus must repent and obey (John 3 :145) .

The Christian message, in the last analysis, is concerned with
creating messengers, so that the discussion as to what happens
when the Christian message is set in a non-Christian world has
to be pushed beyond the area of such a question as "Who will be
saved?" into the area where the determining question is "What
does God require?" It is essential for the discussion that we do
not forget that in order to be a Christian one has to be an evan-
gelist and that the only way to believe in the gospel is to witness
to it. I "was set apart for the gospel," says SL Paul (Rom. 1:1).
He knew a "break** which had taken place in his life. That
"break" always exists between what Christian obedience demands
and what is demanded by every other kind of religious attitude
and conviction.

GOD IN His ACTIVITY OF FULFILLMENT

God's work of salvation, God's work of revelation, God's call
to mission the natural climax of all this is God's final act of
fulfillment. The activity of God will find its fulfillment when He
brings all things under the headship of Christ (Eph. 1:21-23).
The activity of Christ will find its fulfillment when he has sub-
dued all who contest his rule (I Cor. 15:24-25). The mission of
the Church will find its fulfillment when it has grown to its
full maturity in love (Eph. 4:1446). The ministry of the Holy

WHEN THE GOSPEL IS PROCLAIMED 101

Spirit will find its fulfillment when the witness of the Church
to Christ is done (Acts 5:32). In other words, the world at pres-
ent is in the process of fulfillment so that, when we look at the
process and precisely because we are looking at the process, it is
impossible to describe it in any simple way. We see both the scaf-
folding and the building, both the work being done and the fruit
of it. The very intricacy of the process lends truth to all the vari-
ous types of assertions made about those relations which are the
result of the Christian message being active in a non-Christian
world. Professor Hocking defined the old missionary attitude
to other religions as one that sought "radical displacement."
A modern version of this attitude he described as that of
"aloofness." He himself expressed great sympathy with the
attitude of those who saw the Christian faith as the fulfillment
of hopes entertained in other faiths, so that they believed com-
prehension and not displacement to be the goal of Christian
evangelism. We can claim supremacy, they would say, for the
Christian faith, but no monopoly; we can claim that it is absolute,
but not exhaustive; we can claim that it is final, but not complete.

This reading of the process is legitimate within a discussion
that is concerned with the process, but it becomes illegitimate
when it is presented as an assessment of the nature of the Chris-
tian faith itself and its gospel. That is why, in this whole discus-
sion, there can be no way of arriving at agreed positions. The
discussion can never be left within any one of the areas we have
sought to define. These areas interpenetrate one another. If they
did not, the discussion would be futile anyway; and, because they
do, those involved in the discussion must necessarily speak about
different things.

"The light shines in the darkness" (John 1 :5) : this is a process

102 THE PREACHER'S TASK AND THE STONE OF STUMBLING

within which it is impossible by strict definition to separate out
the darkness from the light. "The light has come" (John 3:19) :
this is an event which is both unique and alone, both final and
complete. "The life [of the Word} tvas the light of men:" (John
1 :4) : this is an activity which is particular in its origin but uni-
versal in its presence. "We have beheld his glory" (John 1 :14) :
this is the experience which sets at the heart of Christian obedi-
ence the task of Christian witness.

In a discussion about the Christian message in a non-Christian
world we must speak about all these things. We shall not, there-
fore, always agree in what we say. But we shall have helped to
make clear why we are engaged in this discussion at all. We have
been entrusted with a commission. The task of the preacher
demands that we seek to understand what happens when the
gospel is proclaimed.

V
The Context of the Preacher's Task*

We are preachers. That is our function as Christians. Our
words, our deeds, indeed our whole lives, are intended to pro-
claim that God has wrought redemption for man; and that men
live their lives in the face of God's demand that they respond to
His work. The ministry of Jesus opened with the words: "The
kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel"
(Mark 1 :15) . Those words express also for all time the situation
which is created by the preacher. He who is confronted by a
preacher is confronted with the necessity of decision. His hour
has come. God's sovereignty over him has, as it were, arrived.
He must repent, change the basis of all his thinking and living,
and trust himself to the gospel. God has loved him in Jesus
Christ and, henceforth, he must live in glad acceptance of the
truth that he has been so loved.

This task of proclaiming, of being preachers, is the task about

* This lecture "was originally delivered by me as the John Knox Memorial
Lecture at Geneva in. 1956 and is included as part of the Lyman Beecher
series with their permission. The John Knox Lecture has been printed sepa-
rately by John Knox Honse, Geneva.

103

104 THE PREACHER'S TASK AND THE STONE OF STUMBLING

which the Psalmist speaks when he says: "It is good to give
thanks to the Lord, to sing praises to thy name, O Most High;
to declare thy steadfast love in the morning, and thy faithful-
ness by night. . . * For thou, O Lord, hast made me glad by thy
work; at the works of thy hands I sing for joy" (Ps. 92:1, 2, 4).
The preacher's task is a satisfying task: satisfying to give thanks
to the Lord for His name by which He has revealed Himself to
men, satisfying to declare to men His steadfast love for them in
the morning and His faithfulness to them by night, and, above
all, satisfying to be able to sing for joy because of gladness at
the works of the Lord. "Thou, O Lord, hast made me glad by
thy work; at the works of thy hands I sing for joy" (Ps. 92:4).
God's works and our witness, and the one the context of the
other: that is the theme of this address.

THE PREACHER WHO Is BEING SAVED

First of aU, we are preachers because God has made us such.
His work with us and upon us and inside us is the context
within which our preaching is set. We preach because something
is happening and has happened to us.

A witness can be of three kinds. An illustration will make this
clear. Suppose there has been a car accident: I can be a witness
because I saw the accident. I happened to be on the road at the
time and saw the accident happen. / am a witness because I was a
spectator. I can also be a witness if I was in the car when the
accident took place. I escaped unhurt, though perhaps badly
shaken, but I can testify to what happened. 1 am a witness because
I was involved. I can also be a witness to the accident if in the
accident I was the person injured. I would then in myself be

THE CONTEXT OF THE PREACHER^ TASK 105

proof that an accident took place. I am a witness because I was
the victim.

The context of Christian witnessing is that something has
happened to the witness himself. He has been "apprehended"
(Phil. 3:12, K.J.V.). He has heard God say, "I have called you by
name, you are mine 9 * (Isa. 43:1). "Before I formed you in the
womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you"
(Jer. 1:5). St. Paul declared himself to be a man, the boundaries
of whose lif e were determined by the gospel of God (Rom. 1 :1) ;
St. Peter and St. John announced that they could not obey men
because they were already slaves in the obedience of Christ
(Acts 4:19-20). The Christian witnesses to a work of God of
which he himself is already a victim.

When in his letter to the Corinthians St. Paul says, "The
word of the cross ... to us who are being saved" is the power
of God (I Cor. 1 :18), he is declaring a double truth. The preached
word is active in saving the preacher, and the preacher knows it:
the preacher also knows that it can save the hearer. Therefore,
says St. Paul, "We preach." True preaching demands that the
preacher should always be part of the congregation (he must
always also be directing the word to himself) ; and he must also
be part of the evidence that his word is true. "We are being
saved," and from the sparks that fly from that process the
message proclaimed draws its fire.

It is not necessary to be able to pinpoint a moment in one's life
as the moment of salvation, but it is essential that a Christian be
able to say "I am being saved." John Wesley, born into a pious
and practicing Christian home, was being saved from the very
beginning of his life. When at Oxford he, with his friends who
belonged to the Holy Club, found himself under inner com-

106 THE PREACHER'S TASK AND THE STONE OF STUMBLING

pulsion to live the holy life, he was being saved. When as an
ordained minister of the Church he exercised his ministry as a
parish priest and as a foreign missionary he was being saved.
When in that little church at Aldersgate Street he heard the
epistle read and felt his heart strangely warmed he was being
saved. When he felt compelled to disobey the authorities of his
Church because of what he conceived to be his obedience to
God he was being saved. The whole work is of one piece: God
saves. We too know how true in our own experience it is that
God's work of salvation in us began before we were aware of it,
that it includes His call to us to live the holy life, that it goes
on throughout the course of our daily living, that it elicits glad
response from us and sets us aflame with joy when we realise
that God's command that we love Him is subsequent to His
announcement that He loves us, and that under circumstances
over which we have little control God's work of salvation in us
brings us at some rime to the point of no return.

Toward the end of his life Martin Luther is reported to have
said, "God has led me like a blind horse." Luther had little
control over the circumstances which made him say, "Here I
stand, I can do no other." God had brought him to the point
o no return. Neither had John Wesley any control over the
circumstances which made him say, "The world is my parish."
He too had been brought to the point of no return.

All of us who are Christians are involved by God in this process
of salvation and, irrespective of where we have arrived in our
experience, we are committed to the task of being witnesses.

In speaking, then, about "the context of our preaching" we do
not mean a description of the situation within which the activity
of preaching takes place: we are speaking rather of that because

THE CONTEXT OF THE PREACHER'S TASK 107

of which preaching becomes possible, even bearable. I can preach
Christ crucified, because that word is the power of God to me who
am being saved. The hearer and the preacher stand side by side,
otherwise preaching would be presumption.

THE HEARER WHO Is BEING SAVED

This "alongsidedness" of preacher and hearer resulting from
the nature of the activity of God has also another significance.
Even as we cannot preach unless God be working in us, so also
we cannot preach with effect unless God be working in our
hearers too. Previous to the preached word is the activity of the
Word himself. He said, "I will bring" (John 10:16), "I will
gather" (Luke 11:23), "I will draw" (John 12:32): and we work
with him and not just for him.

During the days that I was preparing this address, an old
man whom I had never known came to rne one day with his
elder daughter and requested me to arrange to have his younger
daughter instructed for baptism. "Who spoke to her about
Christ?" I asked them, and they gave me the name of a young
man who, some years before that, had lived in and had been
converted in the Ashram. Why did that old maa come to me?
Because he had known my father and had learned to respect him
and, therefore, thought that he could trust me with looking after
the many problems that would arise for his daughter after she got
baptized. That is the way evangelism is done. Every evangelist,
when he reaps, finds that, practically always, he reaps where he
has not sown. Somebody else sowed the seed. And where he has
sown somebody else wiH reap. Did not Jesus say to his disciples,
"I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor; others have

108 THE PREACHER'S TASK AND THE STONE OF STUMBLING

labored, and you have entered into their labor" (John 4:38)?
The moment and manner of the reaping is always in God's hands
who makes the seed to grow, "first the blade, then the ear, then the
full grain in the ear" (Mark 4:28). "God's gifts come to his
loved ones, as they sleep" (Ps. 127:2, Moffatt).

This ripening of the harvest which is God's work is the con-
text of the preacher's work, and he who has not learned to work
with God can spoil that harvest by laying anxious and impatient
hands upon it. The story of the Jafina Ashram, written at the
close of its first decade, ends with the following words: "The
Ashram is still a beginning a beginning that challenges our
watchfulness, our devotion and our prayers. But above all it
challenges our patience, for we who grow old so quickly are
anxious to see the full flower before its time. We need to
cultivate the art of waiting for God's hour."

No, it is not for you to open the buds into blossoms.
Your touch soils them, you tear their petals to pieces
And strew them in the dust ;
He who can open the bud does it so simply. 1

The central problem of evangelism is the problem of knowing
how and when to harvest. The land we can prepare in season
and out of season, the seed we can sow always and everywhere,
but the harvest must be given.

When I assumed my new responsibility last year, as Principal
of Jaffna Central College, I received many letters from many
friends assuring me of their good wishes and prayers. But the
letter I treasure most came from a friend who had been a student
in college at the same time as I was. After he left college he
drifted away from the Christian faith. I had known about it, but

THE CONTEXT OF THE PREACHER^ TASK 109

though I met him many times after that I found no suitable casual
opportunity to witness to him about the Christian gospel. But I
prayed for him. One night we found ourselves sitting next to
each other in a crowded railway compartment bound on an all-
night journey. After nearly two years of waiting and praying the
hour of witness had arrived.

I believe I told this story in the address which I delivered at
Evanston, but then I did not know the sequel. Today I can tell
the story with joy because in the letter which I received from
this friend he speaks about that conversation in the railway train,
confesses that he has found God, and assures me that he is pray-
ing for God's blessings for me in my work.

Jesus said to his disciples: "The harvest is plentiful, but the
laborers are few; pray therefore the Lord of the harvest to send
out laborers into his harvest" (Matt. 9:37-38). The laborer who
would harvest must pray that he may discern the hour when he is
sent to reap.

I want to tell you also of another incident which illustrates
the reverse of this truth. Many years ago a friend of mine came
to see me with a friend of his, a Hindu who was a doctor and
whom he had helped to find Jesus. He came to talk with me
about arranging for the baptism of this doctor friend. They lived
in a remote place in Ceylon where there was no settled Christian
community or church. The Baptist Church had some work there
and a Baptist minister went there periodically. Could the baptism
be postponed for a few months so that it could take place at the
time that the Baptist minister would come there to conduct some
special services? I advised that that was all right. Today that
doctor is still a Hindu. The baptism never took place. During the
months that had to elapse before the date of baptism his family

110 THE PREACHER'S TASK AND THE STONE OF STUMBLING

found ways of bringing pressure upon him and of persuading him
not to get baptized. The harvest was lost. Can the harvest be
lost? What a sobering question that is!

To go back to the assertion we made earlier, Jesus is the
Evangelist, he brings the soul to its harvest, and we must care
sufficiently about people to be able to discern the hour at
which they have arrived in God's work with them, His search for
them. Jesus said, "I am the door" (John 10:9), thereby bidding
us whom he has called to be his shepherds to go to his sheep
through him. He must allow us to enter in. We do no good when
we climb over the wall and get amongst the sheep even though
we climb over the wall in his name. We do no good either by
postponing entrance when the door is wide open. The sheep
cannot await our convenience.

He is the "apostle and high priest of our confession" (Heb.
3:1) ; and we preach because he the Ascended Lord is making
supplication for all our hearers; we preach because he the Risen
Lord is in search of every soul until it is found; we preach
because he the Crucified Lord has accomplished man's de-
liverance from sin and a wasted life.

His work is the context of our witness.

THE WITNESS OF THE CHURCH

So far we have spoken about preaching in terms of preacher
and hearer; let us now look at this activity in the context of the
life of the Church, to which it essentially belongs. The Church
lives by its mission to the world, and both preacher and hearer
belong to the Church's life. The Church is not simply a company
of witnesses, it is itself the witnessing community; so that the

THE CONTEXT OF THE PREACHER'S TASK 111

witness of the individual preacher must find Its locus in the wit-
ness of the Church as a whole. Indeed, It is to the faith of the
Church in Jesus as God and Saviour that our witness is borne
before the world.

But this truth about the relation of the preacher to the Church,
which we see so clearly, we often tend to forget when we think
of the hearer. We call people "non-Christians" and forget the
full implication of the fact that for them too Jesus Christ has
already died. The foundation of our preaching is the universality
of the gospel. A hymn by Charles Wesley gives significant ex-
pressinp ?"o 4iis truth;

Father, whose everlasting love
Thy only Son for sinners gave,
Whose grace to all did freely move,
And sent Him down the world to save:

Help us Thy mercy to extol,
Immense, unfathomed, unconfirmed;
To praise the Lamb who died for all,
The general Saviour of mankind.

Thy undistinguishing regard
Was cast on Adam's fallen race;
For aU thou hast in Christ prepared
Sufficient, sovereign, saving grace. 2

We do not take the gospel to someone to whom Jesus does not
already belong, and if to be within the Church is to be a person
for whom Jesus died, then the Church is coextensive with man-
kind.

The Church can be defined in narrower or broader circles, but

112 THE PREACHER'S TASK AND THE STONE OF STUMBLING

no definition can claim exclusive validity. There is a sense in
which preaching always takes place within the life of the
Church because preacher and hearer are both within the active
ministry of the Church's Lord.

It is very important to remember this truth in all our evan-
gelistic work because it will save us from treating those who
have not yet confessed Jesus to be their personal Saviour as peo-
ple who are outside Jesus. In our evangelistic work we are not
seeking to make people become what they are not already. We are
seeking simply to tell them what and who they are. The prodigal
in the far country is a son away from home (Luke 15:11-32).
He is no one else, he is nothing less.

How often, in the Working Committee meetings of the Evan-
gelism Department of the World Council, Pierre Maury would
suddenly exclaim: "This is a saved world." It is. The prince of
this world has been cast out (John 12:31), and already in heaven
the song is being sung, "The kingdom of the world has become
the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ" (Rev. 11:15).
Toward that end, already accomplished, the ministry of the
Church is set. Evangelism is prolepsis as well as proclamation. It
holds within it even now a taste of the triumph of the future.
Jesus said, "This gospel of the kingdom will be preached through-
out the whole world, as a testimony to all nations; and then the
end will come" (Matt. 24:14) not that we can determine when
the end will be but that our preaching is set toward the end.
Indeed, it is here that the preacher draws sustenance for his
faith that his preaching is not in vain. He believes that God will
win.

We have already quoted Charles Wesley; let us close this sec-
tion with another quotation from him, taken from a hymn which

THE CONTEXT OF THE PREACHES/S TASK 113

brings together all three ideas: God's ultimate triumph, the salva-
tion of the preacher, and the grounds of the preacher's hope that
his preaching is not in vain.

Thy sovereign grace to ail extends,
Immense and unconfined;
From age to age It never ends;
It readies all mankind.

Throughout the world its breadth is known,

Wide as infinity;

So wide it never passed by one,

Or it had passed by me. 3

THE CHURCH'S WAJIFARE

We see, then, that preaching considered as an activity within
the life of the Church is set in the context of the accomplished
work of Christ and his continuing ministry; but little is gained
in emphasizing this if it is not also realized that it is precisely
this truth which also determines the Church's responsibility to
maintain the distinctiveness of its own life in the world. The dis-
tinction between the Church and the world is an important one
to maintain when one seeks to emphasize the nature of this
world as a "saved" world.

The characteristic role of the Puritan in the history o the
Church has been to discover and emphasize the ways in which
in every generation this distinctiveness o the life of the Church
should be maintained. It was his concern to spell out in actual
practice what it should mean to follow St. Paul's admonition
that a soldier should not get entangled in civilian pursuits (II

114 THE PREACHER'S TASK AND THE STONE OF STUMBLING

Tim. 2:4). The moraHsm which attaches to the Puritan tradition
is a temptation to which Puritanism is naturally prone, but it is
all-important that this tradition should exert its full power in
the life of the Church if the Church is to fulfill its task of soldier-
ing in the world.

It is irresponsible, for instance, to think that Christians can
find time and money and strength for everything that everybody
else does, and that with spare money in spare time with spare
strength they can serve the ends of God's Kingdom. The great
pearl is bought only by selling small pearls (Matt. 13:45-46).
Where no pearl has been sold, there obedience to the demand of
the Kingdom has not begun.

There is also, for our thinking about obedience, a deeper con-
sequence of the truth that the Church must maintain its dis-
tinction from the world. It is the consequence of believing that it
matters and matters greatly whether a person is within, the
Church as believer or is outside the Church in his unbelief. Let
me state this point another way. We often meet in church con-
ferences to discuss the Church's task of evangelism, and always
everybody is agreed that the Church must evangelize. But there
is little disappointment and less sorrow in anybody's heart at the
coundess number who remain impervious to the appeal of the
gospel. We believe that it is essential for the Church to evangelize,
but we don't believe that it is essential for people to be evan-
gelized.

The Jerusalem Conference of the International Missionary
Council declared that, while missions of an earlier time were
moved by the thought that people were dying without Christ,
modern missions were moved by the thought that people were
living without him. Yes, and yet we have got used to the idea

THE CONTEXT OF THE PREACHERS TASK

115

of people living without consciously accepting Christ as their
Saviour, so that our evangelism has tended to become an expres-
sion of our sense of duty as Christians rather than an expression
of our concern that people must be evangelized. The early Church,
believing that the end was not far off, was willing to turn the
world upside down (Acts 17:6) ; we are concerned are we not?
with arriving at an arrangement of coexistence with the world.
We do evangelize, but our evangelism tends to become the evan-
gelism of a settled community and not of a pilgrim people. Do
we not see that the evangelist, in proclaiming Jesus, is raising for
his hearers the tremendous issue of their own destiny?

To yon who believe, he is precious, but for those who do not
believe, "The very stone which the builders rejected has become the
head of the comer," and "A stone that will make men stumble,
a rock that will make them fail." [I Pet. 2:7-8}

Preaching cannot escape this context

Jesus has told us a parable about those who would not come
to the wedding feast. They had been invited earlier, but no
wedding feast in an Eastern country takes pkce punctually, so
that it is the custom when the feast is actually ready to send
messengers to the invitees who have not come and ask them to
come. In the parable, some people excuse themselves because they
have other things to do. The time does not suit them: but they
know that their share of the feast will be sent to them to their
homes. That is normal Eastern custom. Jesus says, No, the feast
will not be sent home; "none of those men who were invited
shall taste of my banquet" (Luke 14:24).

Preaching is invitation to the Supper, one either accepts or

116 THE PREACHER'S TASK AND THE STONE OF STUMBLING

misses the feast, and it is terribly important as to which happens.
The day of salvation is always "today" (Heb. 3:1345).

CHRIST'S CONTINUING MINISTRY

Let us recapitulate our thinking so far:

Preaching is set in the context of the preacher who is being
saved

Preaching is set in the context of the hearer who too is being
saved.

Preaching is set in the context of the life and being of the
Church, which lives by and witnesses to the accomplished work
of Christ for all men.

Preaching is also set in the context of the Church's warfare with
the world, which warfare is concerned with ultimate issues.

And now, lastly, preaching is set in the context of the con-
tinuing ministry of Christ as the cross-bearer of the world.

When Jesus went to Gethsemane, he turned to his disciples and
asked them to watch with him (Matt. 26:38). They could not
carry his cross, that he must do, but they could minister to the
cross-bearer. How easily we tend, when faced with a situation
where Jesus must suffer, to wash our hands (Matt. 27:24) with
a pious resolution and say that we are not responsible for that
suffering. Someone else is to blame and by our fixing the blame
where it belongs we seek to escape our responsibility to minister
to those who suffer.

"Truly, I say to you,, as you did it to one of the least of these
my brethren," says Jesus, <c y ou did it: to me " (Matt. 25:40). The
preacher must find a way of clasping the hands of those whom the

THE CONTEXT OF THE PREACHER^ TASK 117

world has treated wrongfully, if he is to preach with any
sincerity.

When we read the Beatitudes they come to us as a challenge
because we are not poor, because we are not hungry, because we
do not mourn, because we are not persecuted. But suppose we had
to announce the Beatitudes to the poor, to the hungry, to the
sad, to the persecuted. Then our difficulty would arise. We should
find it impossible to say "Blessed" until we had also found
some way of getting close to those whose blessedness we had to
proclaim.

Since our preaching has to be done in companionship with
Jesus who bears the cross of life, we have to go with him on his
Via Dolorosa. To a few of us it may be given, as it was given to
Simon of Gyrene, to carry his cross for him, but to all of us it is
given to keep company with him along the way. That is our
cross. Christian obedience always demands that we take up our
cross and follow him, and the obedience of preaching is no
exception.

Notes

I. PREACHING INCARNATE-GOD

1. Paul Guinness, "Journey through Asia," in World Commu-
nique (Geneva), Vol. LXV1I, No. 4, p. 5.

2. Methodist Hymn-Book. London: Methodist Publishing House,
1933, No. 791.

3. Ibid., No. 572.

II. PREACHING THE CRUCIFIED CHRIST

1. English precis translation from Sivagnana Siddbyar.

2. The Song Celestial or Bhagavad-Gita, trans. Sir Edwin Arnold.
London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd., 1930,
p. 24.

3. Quran, 4:157.

4. George Matheson, "Christian Simplicity/' in The Qvercomer,
Dorset, England: Overcomer Literature Trust, Vol. XXXVEI,
No. 2, p. 23.

5. William Temple, Readings in St. John's Gospel. London:
MacmiHan & Co., Ltd., 1940, p. 47.

6. Methodist Hymn-Book, No. 371.

7. This quotation is taken from the C. M. $. News-Letter, No.
188, November, 1956, and is a quotation from E. C. Dewick's
The Christian Attitude to Other Religions.

8. Methodist Hymn-Book, No. 19-

120 THE PREACHER'S TASK AND THE STONE OF STUMBLING

III. PREACHING THE RISEN LORD

1. D. T. Niles, Eternal Life Now. Calcutta: YMCA Publishing
House, pp. i-viii.

2. Arnold Toynbee, An Historian's Approach to Religion. London:
Oxford University Press, 1956, p. 296.

3. Methodist Hymn-Book, No. 498.

4. Ibid., No. 548.

5. The Light of Asia, trans. Sir Edwin Arnold. London: Kegan
Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd., 1923, p. 86.

6. Toynbee, op. tit., p. 282.

7. Ibid., p. 295.

8. Methodist Hymn-Book, No. 339.

IV. WHEN THE GOSPEL IS PROCLAIMED

1. Methodist Hymn-Book, No. 86.

2. George Matheson, Hymnal, compiled by the Colombo YMCA,
Colombo, Ceylon, p. 5.

3. Methodist Hymn-Book, No. 75.

V. THE CONTEXT OF THE PREACHER'S TASK

1. Ten Years, p. 20. This is a small pamphlet released by the
Christa Seva Ashram, Jaffna, Ceylon.

2. Methodist Hymn-Book, No. 75.

3. Ibid., No. 77.

Index

Abednego, 69

Abraham, 50, 65

Acts, 29, 30, 34, 49, 88, 98, 101, 105,

115

Aidersgate experience, 106
Amos, 95

Andrews, C. F., 89
Atonement, 57
Austerity, 63-64

Baptism, 30, 96, 100
Beatitudes, 117
Bhagavad Gita, 31, 39
Biblical criticism, 19
Brown, Dr. William Adams, 44
Buddhism, 59-61, 65, 67, 71-73, 75,
77-78

Caesarea PhiHppi, 25, 26
Challenge of Christianity, 81
Chetty, O. Kandasamy, 97
Christian Faith, Commission of the,

56

Christian Gospel, 61-62, 85-86
Christian Message, 86-87, 89, 90-92,

98, 99, 100

Christianity, challenge of, 81
as historical phenomenon, 85
relation of, to other religions,

80-81

Christian factor in, 84-87
and God's fulfillment activity,

100-102
and God's mission activity, 98-

100
and God's revelation activity,

95-98, 99
and God's salvation activity, 92-

94
non-Christian component in, 87-

90

points of view on, 81-84
religion-less, 68
Church, Christian, distinction of,

from the world, 113-14
as instrument of revelation, 96-97
mission of, 100-101
nature of, 85
as part of the gospel, 23
particular function of, 28-29
social service of, 22-23
warfare of, 113-16
as witnessing community, 110-13
Colossians, 52
Conversion, 82, 99
Co-operation of Christians and non-
Christians, 83

I Corinthians, 15, 74, 100, 105
H Corinthians, 19, 50, 51, 52, 57, 99
Crucifixion, 50-52, 53, 58

121

122

THE PREACHERS TASK. AND THE STONE OF STUMBLING

Daniel, 12-13, 68

Death, as price of love, 52-53

sin and, 45
Dewidc, Dr. E. C, 57
Dialectic approach to religions, 83
Discipieship, 26-27, 29, 36

prayer and, 65-67
Dogmas, 73

Eisenhower, D wight D., 66

Elymas, 88

Ephesians, 14, 30, 54, 100

Evangelism, central problem of, 108-

10

the Christian Mesage and, 86-87
the Church and, 110-15, 116
as cross-bearer, 116, 117
the hearer and, 107-10, 116
methods of, 81-83
and obedience to Jesus, 98
the preacher and, 104-107, 116
as struggle for salvation, 34
task of, 103-104

Faith, Christian, 15, 18-19, 48, 84,
88-89, 93-94

contradictions and, 74

between God and man, 82

grace and, 70

independent of religion, 69

and love of God, 75

obedience and, 68

object of, 66-67

problem of, 17, 20

statements of, 56-57
Fellowship of the Friends of Jesus,

97

Forgiveness, 47, 70
Fulfillment, Christianity as, 81-82

God's activity of, 100-102

Gandhi, Mahatma, 17, 20, 28
Genesis, 43, 44, 45

"Glory," 50-51

God, fourfold activity of, 91-102

fulfillment activity of, 100-102

grace of, 70,75-76, 77, 78

humility of, 56, 76

incarnation of, 39-40, 41, 49, 54,
55, 57, 75, 93

as inheritance of man, 66

law of, 46, 48

the "living," 25

love of, 50-51,75,79,89

mission activity of, 98-100

as object and limitation of faith, 67

relation of Jesus and, 37

relation of man and, 43, 44, 47,
91-92, 97

revelatory activity of, 95-98

saving activity of, 29, 30, 32, 33,
35-36, 92-94, 106

societary nature of, 55

unity of, 55

universal yearning for, 81
Gospel, universality of, 111
Grace, 70, 75-76, 77, 78
Graham, Billy, 63-64

Hebrews, 20, 37, 49, 53, 65, 70, 76,

96, 110, 116
Hinduism, 17-18, 27-28, 30-33, 37,

38, 39, 67, 77-78, 97
History, belief about nature of, 54-55
Christian understanding of, 31-35,

48-49

Hocking, 89, 101
Holy Spirit, 30, 94, 100-101
Horton, Dr. Walter, 56, 57
Hunt, Holrnan, 27

Incarnation, 39-40, 41, 49, 54, 55, 57,

75,93
International Missionary Conference,

56 % 114

INDEX

123

Isaiah, 11, 12, 14,95, 105
Islam, 40-42, 48, 49, 51
Israel, 95, 96

Jacob, 50
Jaffna, 21, 67

the Ashram, 107, 108
Jeremiah, 105

Jesus, biblical witness to, 23-24
contemporaneousness of, 20-21, 23,

25

continuing ministry of, 116-17
crucifixion of, 50-52, 53, 58
faith in, 15, 16
as God incarnate, 39-40, 41, 49-50,

54, 55, 57, 75, 93
Hindu attitude to, 17
as inheritance of man, 53
mediating function of, 37, 38, 39
ministry of the Church and, 28-29
Muslim attitude toward, 40-42, 51
parables of, 34, 115
prayer and, 67
preacher's task of bearing witness

to, 32-33, 35-36
preparation for, 27-28
and renunciation, 63
revelation of God fulfilled in, 96,

97
John, 105

Gospel of, 20, 23, 24, 26-27, 29,
30, 40, 50, 51, 54, 78, 88, 91,
93, 99, 100, 101, 102, 107, 108,
110, 112

John the Baptist, 27
Judah, 95
Judgment of all religions, 82-83

Karma, 73, 78
Kingsbury, Francis, 17-18
Kraemer, H., 56, 57

Law, of cause and effect, 71
moral, 67-70

of tradition and of God, 46-48
Love, discipleship by, 26

God's, 50-51, 75, 79, 89

price of, 52-53

Luke, 13, 24, 68, 88, 107, 112, 115
Luther, Martin, 106

Mark, 35, 36, 49, 67, 103, 108
Mary of Magdala, 88
Materialism, 38
Matheson, George, 52
Matthew, 20, 24, 25, 26, 29, 34, 35,

44, 49, 53, 63, 66, 88, 90, 109,

112, 114, 116
Maury, Pierre, 112
Mediation, 37, 38, 39
Meshach, 69

Mission, God's activity of, 98-100
Missionary activity, 22, 101, 114
MoraHsm, 45-46, 62, 67-70, 114
Mysticism, 62. See also Prayer

Nebuchadnezzar, 12-13, 68-69
New Testament, 49-51
Nibbana, 59, 60
Nicodemus, 50, 88, 99-100
Niles, Nathaniel, 9, 22

Obedience, 26-27, 29, 34, 36, 49, 98,

100, 114, 117
Old Covenant, 27

Parables, 34, 115

Patmos, seer of, 50

Paul, 11, 12, 14, 15, 19, 25, 29, 30,

34 S 46, 47, 50, 52, 53, 57, 63,

68, 74, 100, 105, 113
Personality, Hindu and Christian

views of, 33
Peter, 30, 43, 105
I Peter, 43, 99, 115
Pharisees, 50, 52
Philippians, 70, 105

124

THE PREACHER S TASK AND THE STONE OF STUMBLING

Phillips, J. B., 12

Polemic method of evangelism, 81

Prayer, 62, 64, 65-66, 67

Preacher as Christian witness, 32-33,

35-36, 57, 104-107
Psalms, 13, 24, 104, 108
Puritanism, 113, 114

Quran, 41, 51

Radhakrishnan, 57

Ray, Raja Ram Mohan, 28

Reconception of religion, 83

Redemption, 32. See also Salvation

Reincarnation, 31, 33

Religion (s), basic activities of, 62-70

Christian gospel and, 61-62

comparative, 82

dialectic approach to, 83

faith independent of, 69

grace and, 75, 77, 78

prayer and, 66

protests against, 71, 75

relation of Christianity and, 80-
102

role of, in the world, 89

transformation of, 82, 94

variation in, between men, 92
Renunciation, 62, 63-64
Repentance, 30, 34, 42, 88, 89, 96,

100, 103

Resurrection, 75, 76, 77
Revelation, God's activity of, 95-98,

99

Revelation of John, 33, 50, 96, 112
Rice-Christians, 22
Rishis, 38

Roman Catholic Church, 21
Romans, 11, 12, 20, 25, 29, 30, 46,
47, 51, 75, 99, 105

Saiva Siddhanta, 38

Salvation, doctrine of redemption
and, 32

evangelism and, 34

God's activity of, 92-94, 106

Hindu understanding of, 30-31

and incarnation, 40

obedience and, 26-27, 29

as particular concern of Church,
28-29

of the person, 33
Samaria, woman of, 50
Satan, 72

Saul of Tarsus, 47, 88
Schweitzer, Albert, 28
Sen, Keshab Chandra, 28
Sermon on the Mount, 28
Shadracb, 69
Simon of Cyrene, 117
Sin, 93

biblical understanding of, 42-47

Jesus and, 52, 53

strength of, 51-52
Singh, Sadhu Sundar, 23, 65
Sivagnana Siddhyar, 31
Social service, 22-23

Temple, William, 54

I Timothy, 24

H Timothy, 63, 113-14

Toynbee, Arnold, 62, 76, 77

Transformation of religious situation,

82,94

Trinity, doctrine of, 55, 57
Truth, Hindu concept of, 37, 38
religious, 38

Van Dusen, H. P., 56

Wesley, Charles, 24, 70, 78, 90, 111,

112

Wesley, John, 105-106
Winslow, Miron, 22

INDEX

125

"Witnessing, of the Church, 110-13 "World, coexistence with, 115

of the hearer, 107-10 nature of, 88, 89

kinds of, 104-105 as object of gospel, 87-90

of the preacher, 104-107 saved, 112, 114

{Continued from front flap)

pel, without compromise, is a ringing

affirmation that many ministers will
find immensely invigorating and in-
spiring.

"Those who heard Dr. Niles* bril-
liant lectures at the Yale Divinity
School in April, 1957, are not likely
ever to forget them. ... As the lec-
tures proceeded, both a vaster and a
more precise picture of Christianity
emerged. . . . Out of his unusual back-
ground and through his exceptional
gifts lie brought the Good News in a
way that made it fresh and new for
those who thought they had known
it all the time.** LISTOX POPE, Dean
of Yale Divinity School. From the
Preface.

A companion volume

THE PREACHER'S CALLING
TO BE SERVANT

by D. T. Niles
"In this sequel of THE PREACHER'S

TASK AND THE STONE OF STUMBLING,

the new Secretary of the East Asia
Christian Conference treats of the
ministry rather than the message of
the preacher. Dr. Niles is one of the
most effective writers in the religious
field today." G. AIKEN TAYLOR., in
Christianity Today.

No. 7940A

i

1 24 676